Birthdays: A time to take stock

During my college years, every festival and my birthday every year was a big event for me. While Deepavali and Pongal were big celebrations, my birthdays were special. I used to receive close to 50 birthday cards every year, from family and friends (Yes, there was this concept of giving a card).

As years progressed, life started to change. During my initial career, birthdays were still big. Colleagues used to celebrate it at office with a cake cutting, a dinner party that day or lunch during the weekend was mandatory. The festivals continued to be a big favourite, as I would travel back home for the celebrations. 

The first casualty was the birthday. As I grew older, stopped celebrating them. Then the email / egreeting picked up causing the end of the “ birthday card” culture. The next was the festivals. By early 30s, I stopped celebrating festivals and birthdays. I felt these were not worth celebrating. 

A few years later. These occasions became “just another day”. I even stopped buying / wearing new dresses, a mandatory event, for festivals. I even stopped exchanging the mechanical celebratory messages. Only, the special meal at home would continue. 

After all these years, I started to think that there might be a purpose to the birthday. Every new year, we all make new resolutions - become fit, / healthy, lose weight, read more, learn something new, so on and so forth. At the start of every financial year, we start planning for our tax savings, investments etc. 

So, may be, birthdays are a good day, to take stock. A stock taking day or event - for our karma. When I mean karma, I don’t mean the so called “punyam” or “paavam” as prescribed in our religious texts but of our good deeds and misgivings as per our conscience. Every birthday, can be a time for reflection of what good things that we did in the last year. What can we do better? Where did we slip, and can we correct it this year? Can we become a better person, understand better the purpose we are here and take a step towards realizing that? The purpose can be to  realize God or Godliness in yourself. It can be to realize how you can be a benefit to the society at large, which has helped you or to find personal happiness in what you do. It depends on whether you are a theist or an atheist or agnostic. 

So, over the last several years, i have been using this period, my birthday time, to take stock of my karma. I make it a point to start my birthday every year by doing something good. It can be a monetary donation to someone who needs it or till a few years ago, i used to donate blood on my birthday, etc. Something which starts me on the right note. 

So, do your stock taking on your birthdays. Re-focus on your life. 

Life is beautiful.