Today is my 48th birthday, which seems like a fairly ridiculous number. I’m not entirely sure how I got here, but the math appears to check out.
I’ve been trying to decide what to write about it, which is a strange problem for someone who has spent the better part of the last two years writing about his life every single morning. What exactly is left to reflect on when reflection has become part of your daily routine? Am I supposed to reflect harder today? Dig a little deeper? Come up with some profound observation about the passage of time that I somehow missed during the previous 600 mornings?
I don’t think so.
My birthday plans are pretty simple. This morning I’ll watch Jettie play soccer. This afternoon I’ll have dinner with a few family members, and this evening I’ll attend a gallery opening where two paintings I’m particularly proud of will be hanging. No big party, no elaborate celebration, and certainly no gathering that required me to organize a bunch of people to come celebrate my continued existence. That sounds exhausting for everyone involved, especially me.
And I couldn’t be happier with the plans.
What strikes me about the day is that none of it feels like a departure from my ordinary life. I’ll spend time with people I love, watch my daughter do something she enjoys, and share something I’ve created with the world. The birthday is almost incidental. These are the very things that make my ordinary days worth looking forward to.
Over the past year, I’ve made some significant changes to my health. I set a weight-loss goal for my birthday and managed to beat it ahead of schedule. More importantly, I feel better physically and mentally than I have in twenty years. I have a creative practice that brings me enormous joy, a daughter who is kind, smart, hilarious, and endlessly surprising, and a partner who has made just about every part of my life better simply by being in it.
There are still things I want to do, things I want to make, and plenty of ways I hope to grow. I’m certainly not declaring that I’ve figured anything out. Anyone who has read more than three of these essays knows that would be a rather extraordinary claim coming from me.
But I think there is something worth acknowledging about reaching a birthday and not feeling particularly compelled to wish for a different life.
I don’t need today to be extraordinary. I don’t need some grand celebration to remind me that I’m loved. I don’t need to make a list of accomplishments or set a dozen new goals for the year ahead. For once, perhaps the most meaningful thing I can say about where I find myself is also the simplest.
Life is good. Not perfect. Not permanent. Not guaranteed to remain this way tomorrow. But good, right here, right now. And that seems like more than enough reason to celebrate. Forty-eight years in, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be. Well, except maybe 35 again, with everything I know now. But apparently that’s not an option.