I hate when I am fussed over. I dislike parties, and I avoid parties like a plague. When my birthday comes around, I do all I can to make sure that my friends do not remember, and I bully my family members into doing nothing. I simply don’t like birthdays and all the reveries that come with them.
Martin Heidegger said; when a man is born, he is old enough to die. This aphorism has stayed with me my entire life, and it has been one of my anchor values and guiding principle. I live each day that I am blessed to see as though it is the very last day of the life that I have been blessed with, and I have found that birthdays are treated as though they are different from other days, and this is probably my bugbear with birthdays and the special celebrations that would usually accompany them. But you lot have ensured that my birthdays are no longer the quiet affairs that I have preferred.
Social media has shrank the world, and the fascist platform known as Facebook has assured that thousands are reminded of my birthday, even when I would have preferred that they forget. The effusive greetings, well wishes and prayers, that you have continued to send to me since Saturday, have been overwhelming and impossible to avoid or to ignore. I am grateful, humbled, and extremely thankful to you all. Talk about love bombing, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have nothing on you guys, and it would be extremely churlish for me not to write both to acknowledge and to appreciate the love that I felt flowing ceaselessly my way.
I have learnt from an early age to number my days, and Martin Heidegger’s homily has taught me to use the words that were written in celebration of my birthday for a higher purpose. As I have read the words praising and eulogizing my life, I have been careful to remind myself, that I am a mortal being, and that as all of mankind, the only thing that is guaranteed to me, is that I shall one day be dead. The applause and praises offered in my lifetime, matters little and count for nothing, if I shall have failed to ensure that I lived a life that would compel you to affirm the words upon my death.
Whilst thanking you all for your kind words and extremely high praises, I wish to assure you, that I am dedicated to making sure that you wouldn’t have to lie about the life I have lived, when it is time to write my obituary and epithet. I read loving words from known friends, and compelling tributes from self confessed enemies, I was humbled by the outpouring of love, and I appreciate you all.
Thank you all, and may God’s grace be with you all. Amen.
DF.
