You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Happy Birthday!
It’s my birthday.
It feels special, and it feels like any other day.
For most of you IT IS any other day.
50 trips plus 1 around the sun.
Seems like yesterday I started my journey.
Makes me think that birthdays are a gift.
If you can get up and look out the window and see the sun shining, that’s a gift. If you can open the door and hear a bird sing, that’s a moment to savor. If you can wave to a young family walking down your street, that’s a life moment.
Happy Birthday.
Today is Sunday, a lazy, easy, mellow Sunday.
It’s sunny and cool.
December 29th always seems to be sunny and cold.
I’m watching ESPN pre-game shows.
Mike Ditka and Chris Berman don’t know that it’s my birthday, but ESPN apparently does.
The network sent me a robo-email, “May your favorite team not suffer a humiliating loss on your birthday.”
Funny. There it was in my In Box. My first birthday wish comes not from family members, but from ESPN.
According to ESPN, Home Run Champ and infamous Steroids abuser, Mark McGwire was born on this day in 1963. So was Rod Carew (1945) and someone named Grete Waitz (1953)
Apparently I am in very good company.
Happy birthday Grete.
And Happy Birthday to me.
Nothing feels different, but it is different.
It’s my birthday. There’s a little bit of a buzz in my soul, a spring in my step.
It’s my birthday.
One day in 365 when you stop to reflect on what you’ve done, where you’ve been, and perhaps where you’re going.
Have you lived a good life? Have you accomplished what you want? Have you made a difference in the world, in your community, in your family?
Your birthday makes you think about time gone by and what time you might have left.
Time is time. Tick Tock.
It’s finite. It’s endless.
Where do you begin and end in the fabric of forever.
Birthdays are celebrations and mile markers.
If you are ten years old it’s balloons and streamers. If you are 21 years old it’s a license that isn’t fake. If you are 30 years old it’s responsibility and a family. When you’re 50 it’s half a century and a chance to sit on the ledge of life and ponder the universe.
I’m sitting on the ledge now. I see a lot from this vista.
I can see mistakes I’ve made behind me. I can see fireworks and celebrations on the horizon.
The vista is high and the climb down to the road not always easy to see.
A birthday boy has choices.
Some of you know my age. Some of you don’t.
I know what my birth certificate says, but I wonder if it’s accurate.
I look in the mirror and I see the same high school boy who made the game saving catch his senior year down the left field line. I see the same College kid standing on top of Tommy Trojan wearing a graduation gown and high top sneakers and not much else underneath. I see an almost 30 year career that has taken me to the Saudi Arabian desert and to a million crime scenes.
I look in the mirror and I see slight changes in my face, but by and large I see the same reflection I have always seen. It’s true I can’t see long distance anymore without glasses, and it hurts to walk up stairs sometimes, but when I look into my own eyes, I see a man full of fire and life. I hear laughter and I see a future full of unfulfilled dreams.
Is the glass half empty?
Is the glass half full?
As I sit on the vista of tomorrow, I know that I’m more than half way home, but there’s still so much to do. As I look for the peregrine road that winds into the sunset of that place, I sense more steps to take, more work to come.
And that’s the beauty of the birthday.
Half a hundred trips around the sun.
Without this life marker, the days would be lost, the time forgotten, the vistas of reflection missed.
I flippantly said the other night, It’s just another day.”
A friend of mine said “It’s the day you were born. It is special.”
It made me think.
It is special.
For me. For you. For all of us.
Today is my birthday. But feel free to treat today like its your birthday as well.
We are all on this crazy trip around the sun together.
Life’s Crazy™