Life's Remedy A Melody Floating On

So, today is my 36th birthday.

I'm 36.

I have absolutely no idea what that's meant to mean. Am I supposed to think a certain way, be doing something specific by now, act in a certain manner, earn a particular salary? What are you meant to be at 36? Is there some kind of average consensus and if there is then I don't think it's me.

I've never really been one to celebrate birthdays as the passing of time, which is why I'm always very bad at having birthday parties. I tend to see my birthdays as a more reflective day, a time to look back and see if I've learnt from the past and to look forward at where I want to be heading next. It's probably something we should do every day but a birthday's a decent enough milestone to judge things by. A whole series of orbits of the earth around the sun from the moment you first appeared on earth.

I find our fascination and loathing of aging to be most strange. And quite sad. I feel as if as a culture we're constantly trying to offset the inevitable rather than embracing the idea and then just going off and enjoying life whilst it's still there. We can't fight age and we can't fight death. To deny this is to deny nature and to deny nature is ultimately to waste all the beauty that it has to offer. And it doesn't change the fact that there is an end, somewhere down the line. So instead we spend millions trying to look younger, offset the signs of age and then cast off our elderly as if they were a plague, in doing so somehow affirming that perhaps we will be the first ones to be immortal. When one day it will be these people reaping the fears of aging that they have sown, cast off themsleves as the next generation blunders ahead into a sea of anti-wrinkle creams and hair dye.

And yet the most beautiful people I've ever seen are those who wear the signs of their life proudly, with dignity and distinction. Every line, scar, blemish, wrinkle tells the story of their life and for those who have lived lie to the fullest it is a wonder that no artist, poet, musician or film-maker has ever matched.

So here I am, 36 years on this planet. 36 years of experience that is my own and no-one elses. 36 years of tools to discover, challenges to face, changes to experience and conquer; each year that has passed and each year that is to follow the same, each one to be taken on its own merits. I hope that I will always feel this way on my birthdays each and every year I have left: looking forward to what life has to throw at me rather than retreating further from it. Because as far as the numbers go. Well they're just numbers really.

There's a SNUFF song that never ceases to plaster a smile across my face. It's maybe a little cheesy but I like it:

I catch my thoughts and I pray that love will warm your day
If life is cold and cruel, I pray love warms to you
If the seasons turn against you, the winter wind should get you down
If life is cold and cruel I pray love warms to you.



Tunes: SNUFF: Sunny Places (from the album Demmamussabebonk)