Birthdays.

Today, on 24th, is my birthday. Here, have a slice of cake 🍰. Would you like some tea or caramel coffee to wash that down with?

Choosing cakes is not really my forte. I usually pick the cake with the least amount of icing on it. Icing on the cake? I prefer icing IN the cake, usually chocolate. But I always prefer buttercream cake to fresh cream cake. Butter; it's quite a comforting and pleasant word. Almost all the of the words in the baker's lexicon are delectable.

When I was 15, I despised birthdays. I felt celebrating birthdays was superficial and a symptom of narcissism. I'd wonder, after the cake has been eaten, and the people had exited, what had remained?
With the person sitting alone after the party, did they enjoy solitude or suffer loneliness; why do people celebrate their birthdays with such grandiose, if they did not love their own self? I like meaning in everything, and to me birthday parties were meaningless; a cliché pretentious formality. I disliked my own birthday.

Now I am 19. I like my birthday now. It feels like a mark; how years go by. I'm 19 complete 20 running, next year I'll by 20 complete 21 running. A year after that I'll be 21, legally of marriageable age. I dislike the idea that one should get married by 25 and birthed children by 26; I need to make my first feature film by the age of 28. That's the age when Christopher Nolan made his first feature film, Following. My birthday film this year will be either Dunkirk or The French Dispatch. 

When I was 13, just a boy who had reached teenage, I felt like the age of 19 will be a long shot; I thought it wouldn't actually ever come. When I was a wee child, I had listened to a lot of adults say how the world is cruel and life is hard. They'd tell me to study hard or I wouldn't survive, that competition is six and jobs are just five, that to get into a college I had to receive a 95. My parents never told me such things or pressured me for anything, but I'd listen when they talked among themselves. I was scared of being an adult; when I was in 4th grade, I was especially scared of grade 10th. I had heard the studies were so hard! So, I made a plan that from 4th grade to 10th grade, I'll not worry about anything beyond 10th grade: streams, degrees, jobs, companies, etc. I'd live a happy-go-lucky life till 10th, and then if I found 10th difficult, I'd kill myself. Yes, I did think that; no, don't worry about me. In 5th grade I forgot about it.

Time to time, I get a thought in my head; "either I will be 34 or I will not be 34". That's because 34 is an age I perceive to be quite an enjoyable phase of a person's life, when they're financially stable, have improved their footing in their career, have become wise, but still aren't old. I don't want to be not 34; I'd like to know what to be 34 is like.

Nobody takes their earthly belongings to heaven, and regret is an earthly belonging. I know when I'll be on my deathbed, I will not be worrying about past mistakes or embarrassments. One good thing about death is that when a person dies, all that they worried cease to exist, but all that they cared and loved, remains. We're born to experience. The purpose of life is in the word; to live.