Post-Birthday Blooz

It's weird, tonight we watched a couple of shows - Sunday's Girls & tonight's New Girl - & both were about birthdays.  Birthdays of the main characters.  In the shows, friends planned parties for them - in the former show, the main character knew about it; in the latter, it was a surprise.  Is it weird I am a little envious?

I wouldn't let anyone try to throw me a party these days, so it would perhaps have to be a surprise party if it were going to happen, but I have expressed dislike about surprise parties, so my wife, perhaps the only person who'd be able to plan one here in Lexington, wouldn't do it, fearing it would make me mad or otherwise irk me.

But such is the nature of the human brain that, even though I know, I really know, that neither option would appeal to me - no like me the surprise, & I probably would dread a party where I am the center of attention - heck, I am a little weirded out by simple Facebook birthday wishes! - my brain still would have liked some kind of to-do.

Trying to understand this is like the central issue of existentialism - the whole "bang your fist against the wall because you can, not because it will make a difference" thing.  I put that in quotes, by the way, not because it is a quote, but because that's one of things I say when I am trying to explain existentialism to people.

I am taking this from Dostoevsky:

Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.

But you knew that.  I guess it's the same thing for birthdays.  Just because I don't like birthday celebrations doesn't mean I don't want to suffer through them.

Oh!  It occurs to me now that that's how some might think of my show.