Yesterday was my birthday. It was not a significant day for me. Nothing stood out. There was no “wow” factor. For me it was just another day. But for my wife, and my friends, it held a different meaning. Oddly no one actually asked me how old I am. Perhaps that was out of politeness. Perhaps, like me, they recognize that in life everything is moving forward. So on the day before yesterday I was one day shy of being fully the age I reportedly became at the hour and minute of my birth so many years before. Then, I have to say that today I am the age I was yesterday plus one day. I find that atrociously simple and yet complex in a mutually beneficial manner. It occurs to me that we begin the countdown on life when the baby is reported to have exited the mother’s womb. The record will continue until, quite simply, we die. It’s how we count the days and years. I suppose in some small way it all makes sense. I mean, it’s absolutely necessary that it makes sense for some. I don’t know if I fall within those ranks. I might. But I seriously don’t know.
Yesterday Was My Birthday
What I do know is that advancing to another age, a plateau in life, is something we cannot prevent. I find it curious to have friends who lament the passing of the years. I’m not so concerned about the years as I am the activities that occurred within those years. I’m sure that we all have moments where we examine ourselves and in many cases are not happy about what we find there. At least that is how it is with me.
I have determined that over the course of my life I have been very self-destructive at times. Perhaps I was programmed that way by the very people who should have been supporting me and telling me that I could achieve all that I want in this life by working hard. Instead I recall being an 11-year-old child riding in my parents car with my father driving and we passed an area made up of beautiful homes that had smaller, yet still opulent, side homes for guests or for family members. I can recall saying to them that one day I would be successful and I would own one of those homes and the building that was a smaller house would become their home and it would be paid for totally by me. Instead of a simple positive response from both my parents, one so desperately needed, the response was, “Sure. Your brothers said the same thing and neither one of them have accomplished that goal, so neither will you.”
So I truly believe that the programming was attached during that short conversation in which I, as a small child, reached out to the very people who should have been encouraging me, and found instead a belief that I was bound to fail. And, I believe, that I like so many others in the similar situations are doing everything we can to make certain that our parents were wrong and yet the programming, in many cases, was so strong we fail before we begin.
So my hat is off to those who try and fail and yet still fight the false images fed to them as children. Perhaps we are all winners in the end.
THOUGHTS OF A POET IN THE RAIN 
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