happy birthday to me

Not today. A different day in the recent past. I know four other people who share my birthday. This year, on our birthday, I woke up thinking about all of them at once. We were all born in different years. We are composers, singers, peace activists, nurses, parents, married, single, old, young, bald, not bald, grandparents, writers, clarinetists, pianists, visual artists, Japanese, American, New Yorkers, Michiganders, students, teachers. One of us is a warm, gentle peace activist who has a son who is blind. One of us is a selfless and hard-working nurse who is helping to raise her grandchildren. One of us is a deeply talented composer who recently had a Famous Musician refer to him (admiringly) as a "bad-ass motherfucker." One of us is a beautiful artist who fell in love with a dreamy man from another continent and left everything familiar to be with him. One of us likes to make meaning out of coincidence.

Here's the thing: Everyone is connected. You can hear that over and over and you can read what Chief Seattle said about it and you can go to a Christian church and hear that we are all brothers and sisters with the same divine Parent and you can believe with the Buddhists in the essential unity of all things.... but sometimes, it helps to take a bunch of nice people who all share your same birthday and invite them to an imaginary party in your head and then sit there with them. Sit there and wonder what it means to have the same birthday, and wonder what else you have in common, and realize finally that you have everything in common---that there is an immense and orderly web of connection that is shimmering and alive, but mostly invisible, and, while a shared birthday is maybe not such a big deal, it still illuminates one slender, joyful filament of something much larger and more complex, the invisible secret of our interdependence. Happy birthday, dear ones. We are all bad-ass motherfuckers. In the best way.