Happy Birthday to Me. A Wish for All of You.

Another birthday has arrived and here I sit thinking about my life. I’m to an age where I feel like I’ve lived long enough to have learned a thing or two and I’m also at an age where I can’t take living another year for granted. There are things I wonder about; things I want to say that I want to have written down so they don’t make me itch at night.

I have questions that will go unanswered. I want to know WHY we suffer so very much in this life. Why are things such a struggle for most people? Why is there so much GREED and AGGRESSION when compassion and understanding, when brotherhood, friendship, love, could make this heaven on Earth?

It drives me nuts.

I see on the news something about a kid who is dying of cancer. Her mom asks for a few people to show up at the hospital and sing her Christmas carols. 10,000 people show up. They forgot about their own needs to help someone else. Or of course there’s “BatKid” the little boy who had a large part of San Francisco turn out to make his dreams come true for one very special day.

We marvel at the spectacle and we may even cry. We have the ability to create such beauty and MAGIC simply ignited by our common basic goodness.

What if we treated EVERYONE with the same desire to help them make their dreams come true? Not just a kid dying of cancer, but EVERYONE. Instead of worrying about what YOU get out of it, you focus on others. Then one day you find that your life is so much better because the same good intentions you have are mirrored right back at you. We can create this world right this very second, but many of us are too wrapped up, too busy, too afraid to try.

©2014 Robin A.F. Olson. Yours truly with clown.

I understand there are passages in your life where you only think about yourself-usually when you're very young. Then comes a time when you may mostly think about getting a partner, maybe having kids and it’s so easy to get caught up in your own shit that you can’t see beyond that...to the world that IS crumbling around you, with wild weather changes, an ocean filling with garbage, animals driven into extinction, as we become less and less connected to the natural world.

What makes it worse is that there are people who run monstrous corporations who knowingly create products that pollute, poison, ruin the world. Why do they have to put ingredients in our food that they KNOW will cause us to be ill and cause an epidemic of obesity? Yes, I DO blame food companies for putting sugar and gluten into food that doesn’t require it as a root cause for widespread ill health. Why base your model of business on GREED? Don’t you see what it’s done? You may be the “1%” and have all the money and more, but at what cost? How many millions of people will have terrible lives so you can spoil yourself with foolish rewards? Or prove you can run a “profitable” company to make others rich.

WHY is the answer to so many things to have CONFLICT? To wage war? Because someone has something YOU WANT..so YOU CAN HAVE SOMETHING, CONTROL SOMETHING, have POWER OVER OTHERS. Where does all that end up? How does that make your life and the lives of others better?

It has been said far more eloquently by far more people, but in my humble way I just want to know WHY it has to be like this. And WHY can’t we look at everyone we meet, or simply share a bus ride with, the same care and concern as we would our own children? We’re all in this together whether we want to admit it or not.

It breaks my heart to see what truly breathtaking things humanity is capable of and why the world isn’t a much better place for it. Greed and aggression are winning out.

I’m challenging myself to be more open to others, with no boundaries, to open my heart to everyone I meet, to not be afraid to reach out, to judge less and be helpful more. I hope that you will join me or let me salute you if you're already doing this.

So, my birthday wish is really for all of you. I hope you have a wonderful life and help others do the same. Happy Birthday to you when that day arrives and happy everything else.

Cherish this day, this gift you have been given, because there are no guarantees you'll have another. Try, if you can, to remember how LUCKY you are to have this precious life and do something wonderful with it.