We just celebrated my older son’s birthday this weekend, with about a standard a party as you can throw. He had a blast. His friends had a blast. It was so much fun. My birthday is coming up soon and I am becoming a much less exciting age.
I think that birthdays, and birthday parties, are for kids. It’s kind of a core ideology of mine.
That makes me a bit of a curmudgeon. But I think it’s for good reason. When your young, and I’m perfectly happy to accept that this extends into young adulthood, there are years that are true milestones. You are so rapidly advancing through life that to come together with friends and have a good time can be a really genuine celebration of something momentous. There’s a real burst of energy in kids parties that represents this that I just don’t think you see with adults.
As you get older, those milestones fade. Our process for advancing becomes something we need to actually work on, not something that just comes with time. And then that phase in life hits, I think it’s time to put away the parties and celebrate those milestones in another way.
But hey, that’s just me.
John Gardner on the process of self-renewal
Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves. The purpose is to grow and develop in the dimensions that distinguish humankind at its best.
Notes Block – hello from the saved content!