What’s the preferred method of celebrating a birthday?
Is it best to reflect on the years that have passed and molded one’s character — examining the successes and failures that have brought you this far? Is ruminating over goals that have yet to be accomplished the best way to commemorate one’s birth?
Or are birthdays about celebrating the mere act of existence? Do we briefly — perhaps even subconsciously — acknowledge that among the vast darkness and light that is the universe we miraculously exist and mark it with cakes, drinks and endless choruses of woo-hoo!?
Do we party or ponder?
That’s probably not the best question to ask if you’re celebrating the United States’ birthday at a barbecue with beer and fireworks this weekend. Well, not if you want anyone to keep talking to you.
When you’re a kid you savor birthdays because the day is all about you. Parents, friends and classmates have to be nice to you because it’s your day. No one else matters as much as you do. At least not on your birthday.
But as you get older the fuss and hullabaloo lessens. With age and maturity comes, hopefully, growth and a sense of one’s place in the community. It is your birthday today but you begin to realize that somewhere else on some other day it is someone else’s birthday. You may be special and unique. But you are not alone.
Looking around you begin to take note of how your friends and neighbors have changed relative to you.
For example Canada celebrates 148 years of existence in 2015 and they have, as a country, acknowledged gay marriage for about 10 years. The United States, in comparison, just last week came to recognize same-sex marriage as a right thanks to last week’s Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court in June also struck down a challenge to federal subsidies to health care, meaning now more U.S. citizens can have access to basic medical coverage.
In Mexico, which will be 194 years old in September, universal healthcare has been in practice for about three years.
Depending on where you stand in the political spectrum the recent Supreme Court rulings are either a positive or negative step in this country’s history.
For me, an American citizen, I see them as tremendous strides in creating a better place to call home for all people (hetero couples will not be forced to divorce and healthy people will not lose their rights to eyelifts just because gays and the uninsured now have the same rights as they do).
But I also see that this country still has some growing to do. We still have a massive gap between the working poor and the wealthy and the educated and ignorant. Blacks and whites. Men and women. Happy birthday, America. We still have some work that needs doing.
