Today is my birthday. December 16th. Another year marked, another candle theoretically added to a cake I probably won't have. And I find myself asking the same question I ask every year: what exactly am I suppose to celebrate?

We celebrate birthdays as though they're personal victories, but I've contributed nothing to humanity that warrants annual recognition. I haven't cured diseases or written great literature. I haven't fed the hungry or solved pressing problems. I go to university, I come home, I exist in my small corner of the world making barely a ripple in the vast ocean of human experience. So what are we really doing when we celebrate birthdays?

For anyone else who might feel the same way the only answer I can give you is consciousness exists. Just the ongoing fact of existence in a universe that didn't have to include me but somehow does. I don't know if celebrating that is profound or absurd, maybe it's both

"I think, therefore I am"