Today I turn 45! Sometime today anyway.... I think my actually birthday was sometime at night in the eastern timezone, which I suppose would make my real birthday tomorrow morning Japan time. Hmm. I'm sure the exact time is important for people like 
Five years ago on the occasion of my 40th birthday I wrote this post. I thought today I'd do a sequel.
Oh... birthday photo? Well that age 40 post featured me and my youngest and in the caption I wrote that I'd get his brother next time... well, it's next time, so let's do one with my oldest for this year.
Looks mostly the same, eh? You can see my facial hair is now a bit more grey, and my face fatter but otherwise I think these past five years have treated me fairly well. Right? ...right???
In that post I wrote that I was only barely aware of the fact that I was 40. That was true. Most of my 20s and 30s just kind of all blurred together. From year to year I was never really aware of my age unless someone asked me and I had to do the math, because it just didn't matter to me.
Well, it still doesn't matter to me, but back then people didn't remind me of it quite as often as they do now, so I didn't have that constant awareness of how old I was. That mostly changed after turning 40. From there on, I was reminded of my age much more often. Whether from the doctor telling me I now needed this and this checked because I passed some age milestone, or from my wife warning me to be careful when I do something because I don't want to hurt myself, or from my kids who take joy in constantly pointing out how "old" I am.
Other than the number, I feel no different from five years ago. Nor any different from when I was a kid, to be honest. I have some more pains that I don't remember having when I was a kid, but pains aren't really the kinds of things we remember, are they? Inside our head we are ageless, and I feel the same as I always have. I know it's this way for everyone. I've talked to old men in their 80s and 90s who say much the same. Isn't it funny... everything changes—the buildings of our town, the technology we all use, the latest fads—everything except us, but then we look in the mirror and realize our outer shell has also changed. As Heraclitus said:
You cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are continually flowing on.
I could launch into some Zen philosophy here about the self, the ego, rebirth, that kind of thing. But in the interest of keeping this post somewhat short and light today, I'll spare you all. Anyway, here's to the next five years! Hopefully all of us will still be here and Hive will have mooned so we'll all be rich! Now there's a birthday wish!!
We should celebrate. One of my favorite books is The Lord of the Rings. I've written about my love of this book (and the others in the series) on Hive and the pre-Hive network which must not be named several times. At the very beginning of LotR we celebrate Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday and we learn that hobbits don't receive presents on their birthdays, they give them. I like that.
In the spirit of that birthday tradition, I am going to do a little giveaway here. I'm 45 so I'm going to be giving away 45 shares of HSBI (Hive Stake-Based Income). I've traded some HBD and I think I have enough Hive to cover this giveaway, so let's go!
How will this work? Just give me a comment to say you are here to take part in my birthday celebration! But I'm going to add a step to that. To tell me you've actually read this post and are not just jumping on the giveaway bandwagon, if you want to be in on the giveaway, answer me this question: What is your favorite birthday memory and why was it so excellent as to stick in your memory? Also, for kicks, Lord of the Rings—which do you prefer: movie or book? Answer me those questions and be one of the first 45 people to reply to this post and you will get 1 share of HSBI sent to you within a few days. If this post doesn't get 45 comments—and let's face it, it probably won't—then I will reward the leftover units of HSBI to the best comment. It may take me a few days to compile a list, get all the HSBI sent out, and post proof, but I'll try to get around to that within a week.
Now, I'm going to go attempt to do as finish my work as quickly as possible so I can enjoy time with my kids. They are still young enough to want to be with dad so I'm sure they have some kind of event planned, so I need to be ready for them.
| David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
