Text Box: July Birthday By Jim Randers I’m having another birthday, it seems they never end, and they’re always just around the corner. I wish we didn’t celebrate birthdays, not even acknowledge them. I think life would seem longer; birthdays come and go too fast. I wonder if people in other parts of the world feel the same way, especially in more primitive cultures. Is this more of an American phenomenon? Maybe European too, did it start there or here? Maybe it’s just all about commercialism started by smart marketers in the retail world. When you’re younger you want to be older and when you’re older you want to be younger. Is anyone ever happy with the age they’re at? I loved 21, I couldn’t wait to be 21, and then I wanted to be in my 30’s, older and more mature, people take you more seriously. Fifty was a fright as you are entering an age always perceived by the notion you really are old and at fifty and beyond, it doesn’t really matter what age, you’re old. I’m way beyond that and I don’t feel old, so much for perception, reality is as reality does. However I do recognize one thing: this is a one-way trip and I’m getting closer to the end, and birthdays don’t make me feel better about it. The wind dances over the earth, the water flows. Rocks sit and stare at the sky, space seems changeless. They are all careless wanderers depending upon one another, thinking not of time or age or birthdays. The universe knows what we have a hard time dealing with, and that is, everything dies and starts over again, usually in a different form. It doesn’t weep or boom or clatter, things just fade away and new things take their place. Humans are the only ones on the earth that make a big deal out of it. I like it when there are quiet endings. The mark of ones life should be when one is living and judged on what they are doing with it. Death should go quietly, without fanfare like a rose in the fall or a lone wolf in the woods. I know I have written about the need for celebration throughout ones life, but everything in life has a contradiction. In this case I have known many wonderful and talented people that had a quiet departing, when I think about them I don’t think about a huge funeral, an expensive casket or how many attended. I think about when they made me laugh, when we hugged, when we shared experiences, when they brought me comfort. I think about when they introduced a new idea to my head, or made me see life in a new way. I like that! The earth keeps turning, the Mississippi keeps flowing, we sit and watch it rise and fall, we see calm days and storms, lightening and dead quiet. The Native Americans stood and watched the same river flow, felt the same emotions as we do, I’m quite sure. Two thousand years ago, Julius Caesar was in Rome, he didn’t know about the Mississippi, he didn’t know that he wouldn’t see another birthday July 13th, he didn’t know he would be assassinated March 15th. Life is full of surprises, and the best way to go through life is to let life go through us and realize the unexpected should be understood as the expected. There is deep meaning to the words “flow of life.” Just like the river flows, realizing that every day something new can happen but still it keeps on flowing. Birthdays are like that, constantly moving. I wish I didn‘t know about birthdays, I wish I was like the river and just kept moving and moving and moving on, without dates and times. The hour which gives us life begins to take it away. Seneca, Hercules Furens (1st c.) MAIDEN ROCK PRESS AUGUST 2009Text Box: INSIDE The Golden Rockers Reviews & cartoons Maiden Rock Float & Announcements Age of Nefarious & Budding Campgainer July Birthday About the Press