True Freedom

What makes birthday's so special anyways? In reality, we're turning one-year older — not younger. With that being said, who really wants to get older? Assuming we die of old age and not some freak accident or homicide, doesn't that mean we're one year closer to dying?

We spend a good portion of our lives freely. As children we have no responsibility. No rent, no car payment, no trying to find our significant place in the world or trying to define our humanity. We are just children: young, naive, innocent and free.

Even as teenagers we remain essentially free. This includes the handful of young adults whom take on parental roles at early ages. Whether it be in our early teens or as young adults, at one point in our life we partake in an often undermined sacrifice… our freedom.

Ironically, however, it's a catch twenty-two. We give up freedom in exchange for freedom, completely unaware that we had freedom all along. In other words we trade true freedom for a superficial freedom created entirely by politics. When it comes to age, your right to partake in anything is pre-defined in a system as simplistic as the number system we use to determine it. When you're sixteen, you're legally old enough to drive. When you're eighteen, you're legally old enough to vote and smoke if you so choose to. When you're twenty-one, you're legally old enough to drink. This leads us to more irony.

The government terms these age requirements political rights, but we really don't have the right to do anything because not conforming is a death sentence. Since we don't have an automobile, we might as well walk our way to the waiting line also known as the poor and lower class. Turning sixteen isn't a bandwagon taking you one step closer to having complete freedom. It's more like a discreet push from what Adam Smith call's the invisible hand right off the edge of a cliff, and we furthermore have no say in the matter. Still naïve, we're oblivious to the fact that we're even hovering over a cliff. We're not even sure how we got there in the first place. The only thing we know is that for better or for worse we can't stay attached to our mother's loins for eternity.

From that point on we spend the rest of our lives searching for the greener grass we have simple faith is growing on the other side. In order for that grass to grow— we need rain, and most of the time when it rains, it pours. But, it also needs sunlight to grow. So we take the good with the bad and maintain a simple faith in tomorrow. That's what gets out of bed every morning. A simple faith that okay's us to go to bed at the end of each dark, wet and gloomy night thinking that tomorrow is another day.

That's what makes birthday's so special. It's like the jagged stem of a rose pricking our fingertips. The small trickle of blood is verification and proof that we're still alive. Birthdays secure another year of survival through and throughout the sun and storm. Aside from that it's the one day of the year we're allowed to escape from the routine of society as a whole, and have one special day dedicated just for us.