Birthday Musings

Today is my 25th birthday, and I’m lost in a cascade of emotions, to say the least.

Some of the facts are clear. I am now closer to thirty than I am to twenty. That is a sobering thought, to be sure. From here on out my metabolism is going to slow down, if it hasn’t done so already. Eventually, once I reach my forties, my 6’3” frame is going to gradually shrink and my posture will get worse. Supposedly my frontal lobe is now fully developed, but people don’t have to stop learning once they reach twenty-five.

I’m going to get a handful of presents. I didn’t request anything in particular besides a cake; once you attain a certain age, birthdays don’t feel as monumental. But this one, my “silver birthday”, is somewhat different.

When I woke up this morning at about 5:30 AM, still recovering from the jet lag I experienced upon my return from Ireland, I came across the horrific news about Air India Flight 171. And I want to be careful talking about this, because it’s a horrendous tragedy. But hundreds of people have been confirmed dead, including all of the 242 passengers and crew. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which was scheduled to fly from Ahmedabad to London-Gatwick, crashed shortly after takeoff. 

At time of writing, we don’t know precisely why this crash happened. Transportation safety boards will review the circumstances and come to their conclusion, and hopefully changes will be made to ensure this doesn’t happen again. 

More importantly for the purposes of this post, it’s made me think about how fragile life can be. One day, you’re here - the next day, you aren’t. 

If you’re lucky, it’ll be after a long life, with loved ones by your bed, passing peacefully in your sleep. Maybe you’ll go quietly with very little pain - to theextent that there can be a “good” way to die, it’s something like that.

Now, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not a particularly philosophical person. I don’t spend a lot of time pondering the secrets of the universe beyond what science can reveal. Perhaps I’m a science enthusiast, because it’s always cool to discover what innovations will be unleashed as long as RFK Jr. doesn’t take them away from us. Even with the increase in obesity (which isn’t exclusive to the United States, even if it’s worse here), it’s not like a third of the population dies before age 5 anymore. 

I’m not particularly spiritual either. That’s not to say I haven’t considered questions of faith and similar matters, what in more technical terms is called philosophy of religion. I’m well aware of the problem of evil, and I have at least passing knowledge of theodicy, the subset of philosophy and/or religious apologetics used to explain away said problem of evil. I do not personally pray or go to church, and in general I live my life as though God’s not real. At least, I’d like to think I live to the fullest.

 Truth be told, I don’t pay as much attention to arguments for and against the truth of religious claims as I used to. I find I’m happier when I don’t give it much thought. 

But this milestone, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day I was cut from my mother’s womb, has forced my hand.

There is what some call the “genetic lottery of birth.” I’m not talking about how where, when, and to whom you are born plays a role in your life’s circumstances. That’s obviously a factor, but it’s not the only factor, particularly in an age when the world is more connected than ever.

Rather, I’m referring to how our personalities end up in bodies. How is a “soul”, for lack of a better word, matched with a body and brain? Even if all that I am, all that might be called a soul, is ultimately a product of this meat computer we call a brain, none of us are privy to how this process works. Does the universe have its own Random Number Generator? Is there any order in all this chaos?

I don’t know. In all probability, none of us on Earth will figure it out in my lifetime. I’m not going to parrot one of those arrogant religious activists who say science can’t answer that, because maybe it can one day. I just don’t know when that day will come. I likely won’t be around to see it.

There’s another matter, which is that of the afterlife. 

I don’t mean to wave away the legitimate reasons many people think there probably isn’t one. Often they point to how traumatic brain injuries can radically change a person’s personality, or how there’s no activity in the brain upon a person’s death. Personally, in the latter case, I don’t see how the absence of evidence is necessarily evidence of absence. Why would a person’s soul have to be physically within their body?

Personally, I don’t know what to believe, or even what I want to believe, with regards to what happens after you die. I’m aware that from a scientific standpoint, it’s very difficult to justify a belief in heaven on empirical evidence alone. And we can have a conversation about whether even eternal bliss would ultimately be less than ideal. Anyone who’s watched The Good Place all the way through (spoiler alert) has probably considered that forever is an unimaginably long time, even if you spend it in the titular paradise.

If I end up in an afterlife, I want something to work toward. It’s said that death is the ultimate motivator; we are incentivized to do whatever we need or want to do now, or at least soon, because one fine morning we won’t be able to. And the world will move on without us, and the people we loved most won’t have been able to hear I love you one last time. 

Again, empirical evidence for an afterlife is incredibly spotty at best. I do not deny that. But there are two reasons I hold out some hope.

One reason is because pretty much every ancient culture came up with something we might consider a religion. Of course, given the many differences between each form of mythology, they can’t all be right about every detail. For all I know, none of them were right about any details. Still, there were plenty of commonalities between many of these belief systems, such as ideas about how the world was created and what happened after you died. And this happened at a time when these civilizations rarely if ever interacted with one another except maybe to go to war. If prehistoric cultures agreed on some spiritual matters, then I think it’s at least conceivable there’s something to it. 

The other reason is because I feel I have to.

I live in the United States, a country where a disproportionate number of people die young. Gun violence in particular is an enormous injustice, a stain on this nation, and even if we were to pass gun control (which I have no serious expectation will ever happen), the children at Sandy Hook Elementary, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, Robb Elementary, Apalachee High, and so many others aren’t coming back. 

A lot of the media coverage around school shootings centers around the gun control debate (as it should, even if that debate is pretty much over), but what many people don’t fully appreciate is how much these kids missed out on. Their lives were cut incredibly short. In the case of Sandy Hook, it took just minutes of a mentally ill young man’s time to take the lives of twenty literal children, and that just feels so profoundly unfair.

And look: I realize that the world has no obligation to be perfectly fair to us, not remotely. Put more bluntly, wishing it doesn’t make it so. This “argument” for an afterlife isn’t exactly philosophically satisfying, let alone scientifically rigorous. It’s not going to convince any logically mindful person who doesn’t already fervently want to believe. And honestly, I’m not sure I believe it. 

But with how fucked up the world has been lately, particularly the United States, I really hope there’s something else out there. Maybe not eternal paradise, because that might well have its own problems. I just really hope there’s a possibility that somehow, somewhere, things can be made right.

Happy birthday to me, huh?