Happy Birthday

I celebrated my 47th birthday at the airport. I just arrived from Jakarta via Singapore and waited for my bags to come out. When it did, it was past 12 midnight and it was time to celebrate my birthday. It was on Saturday and I was tired. I just wanted to go home knowing that I have to attend the Israk Mikraj function at the ICC in the morning and then a farewell dinner in the evening. Celebrating my birthday was the last thing in my mind.

I was really surprised and touched when my colleagues and friends at MOD surprised me with a cake at the end of the farewell ceremony for our former minister. There was a cake and both my wife and I blew the candles. Thank you guys.

In fact it has been years since I last really celebrated my birthday. A couple of birthday dinners with the family here and there but not real celebrations. Certainly not with a cake and with lots of people singing Happy Birthday. My wife and I with our 10 year old son, would generally celebrate it somewhere quiet. Both my wife and I are Cancerians, and it was easier celebrating ours at the same time.

Sometimes I wonder why we celebrate birthdays? Especially as we grow older, it becomes less fun. Do we celebrate it because we survived another year? Another year in our cumulative achievements?

I see birthdays as I see milestones along the highways and the roads we traveled. Each one an indicator of how far you have traveled but more importantly how nearer you are to your destination. In a way birthdays are celebrations of surviving another year.

But birthdays are also reminders how close you are to the end of your journey. Who knows you might not even see the end of your journeys and you could end your journey any time. Birthdays are time to stock of yourself and to be muhasabah diri. To remember how mortal you are. How prepared you are for the end. It is also a time to look back and remember the fun you had with your family around you. Watching the family and children grow. They will replace you and hoped that you had left enough knowledge and ability for them to have grown up and be able to become responsible parents one day.

Happy Birthday.