A Spectrum of Being - Reflections on Birthday Week
It is my birthday week, and this year, I dare say I am excited to mark another year. Yet, the current goings-on are not exactly smooth sailing. Recently, we have suffered a few losses—friends, friends' parents, and family. It struck me just how much our lives are conditioned from a young age to try and separate happiness and grief, as though these two experiences only course through us separately, in a vacuum from each other. Like many latchkey kids, I was weaned on TV, mostly cartoons, and I remember the limited, inevitable themes the storylines would reiterate: good and evil, with absolutely nothing in between. It conditioned me to make quick, swift judgments of characters who had to neatly fit into one of two options. But being just a few days away from my born day, at a time when my nearest and dearest are dealing with profound loss, I am reminded of how life actually works. It throws us whatever it will, and it is up to us to make sense of it. From one day to the next, we find...