happy birthday?

It's quarter after midnight, and it's officially my 25th birthday. Funny, I don't feel any different...I haven't felt different any year before, either, though my mom would always ask me if I felt older.

Yes, it's a birthday. It's the anniversary of the day of my birth...but it's not celebrating a year-older me. I'm not the same person I was when I was born - whether literally or figuratively. My entirety of skin cells have sloughed and regenerated countless times. My experiences have expanded and broadened every day since birth. I have learned, unlearned, and relearned. I'm me, but completely different every day. So is "birthday" really accurate?

I'll get older every year, and I'll see many more wonderful and terrible things. I'm sure I'll laugh, I'll cry, hurt and grow. I'm sure I'll give and receive much more love. And I'm sure my body will replace itself many times before the end of my own time here. I think that's great.

And what's a "year", really? Other than a unit of time we created to make things easier to categorize and organize, a year doesn't seem very tangible. And years are different on different planets, depending on orbit and distance from the sun, galactic location, etc.

So maybe it counts more as a "happy one more Earth year of doing Earthy things"? Or happy "your car insurance is now going to drop" day? Or happy Sunday?

Either way, it's all pretty neat. The more time I spend around this joint, the more I believe Kurt Jr. was right: "Humans were put here to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise".

Ain't no other nation I'd rather fart around with than the Earthly nation. Earth is where it's at, for sure...that is, without all the dang oldness.