The Lucky Ones

My mother always made a big deal of birthdays. A festive tablecloth came out on the birthdays of family members, vinyl white with rainbow streamers, balloons, and “Happy Birthdays” painted on. A glass cake tray sat on the table and presents overflowed even when we didn’t have a lot of money. Joy abounded on birthdays. I remember most my mother’s smile while she watched us open gifts. I now have minimalist leanings and often prefer not to receive gifts. But, my love of birthdays and the bliss that accompanies them still grows on that foundation of gifts and excitement originally given to me by my mother.

I find it a challenge to communicate the variety of gratitude my birthday brings without feeling like I’m sounding cliched. But, the thanksgiving is visceral. My body exudes recognition of ALIVENESS while also acknowledging each year, each moment is one closer to the end. It’s overwhelming and invigorating in a way that begs me savor every moment. A quote by the Biologist Richard Dawkins may help to explain:

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds…”

This year I took a day hike with my husband and sister to a section of the Appalachian Trail. We ate a picnic lunch at the summit, bouldered outside for the first time on some menacing rock stacks, and visited a nearby lake (you can see it in the above photo from the summit). They plucked four leaf clovers in the grass bordering the beach and we surveyed the new landscape the light created as the sun dipped behind the trees.

The entire day felt perfect. I felt overjoyed in a way I have not yet felt since moving back to my home state and experiencing the loss of my mother-in-law. The complex battles I have been fighting with anxiety, grief, and depression in the wake of the losses of her friendship/motherhood and the safe home my husband and I created in Oregon have been some of the most challenging of my life. But, as we drove back home with the western sky ablaze behind us, I listened to the words of Rebecca Solnit drift through the car as she spoke of hope in the dark. And, for a moment, I felt such a desire to hold on, to preserve the satisfaction and wildness I gathered from the hike.

Instead… and with great joy… I let it go.