Each Day is a New Gift

Why do we celebrate our birthday? It is to commemorate the day we came into existence, the day when we came, as Martin Heidegger put it, as Dasein ('Being-there' or 'there-being'). The day we celebrate our Geworfenheit (throwness). And, the day we started as an In-der-welt-sein (a ‘Being-in-the-world’).

If the purpose of celebrating our birthday is to celebrate our coming in to existence, then slowly but inevitably we are losing sight of the real purpose of this event. We think lesser of our beginning and dwell more on the time that is left to us. Every year when we celebrate our birthday we look back at the accomplishments we have done given our age, if we are ahead or behind, or if time just passed us by. It's as if our life is under a specific contract or like having a specified deadline --a life-span. But young men ought to think of death just as much as old men. Death is no more pressing for the old than it is for the young.

Celebrating our birthday isn't about speculating how many years we have left in our existence but about the occasion of celebrating the original event of our birth and to remind us that each day is a new gift.

I just turned twenty seven today, another reason to celebrate the gift of life. I say it's a gift because it was gratuitously given to me, not because I asked for it, nor earned it like a reward, nor do I deserve it. I may have moral and political right to life, but I do not have a metaphysical right to it. I cannot demand that I deserve the right to come into being or to deserve to exist for another day. It was given to me freely by a higher Being whom I call my God.