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Monday, August 4, 2008

The non-birthday birthday celebration!

Some time in June while I was at my mother’s house I received an email from Nisarga letting me know that my birthday was on July 26th and that we would be celebrating it in Toledo!

For you to understand this I think I need to rewind a bit to the end of May. Nisarga’s birthday is on May 24th, and in typical antigoni fashion I started to wish him happy birthday a couple of days before his actual birthday. Ok, perhaps I need to rewind a bit more…

I have spent about a third of my life far from my family. By family I mean mother and brother. So we have gotten used to celebrating birthdays and Christmas and Thanksgiving and Mothers Day and other things just before or after the actual date… or sometimes long before or after. And well, I have adopted the idea that these dates are just numbers on a calendar and that what matters is the concept and the feeling inside and so when we decide we’ll celebrate Christmas, its Christmas... even if that is sometime in January or February, as we have done twice in India for example… with a tree, and Christmas music, and exchange of gifts, and nice food, and the whole lot.

I have extended this concept to partners and friends but for the most part it hasn’t worked out quite the same. When I say I’m celebrating Christmas in January, they say “how can you celebrate it in January, Christmas is in December!” Obviously these people haven’t lived away from their families for years or perhaps the idea of sharing occasions (religious or otherwise) may not be as important. The same thing happens with birthdays. I say “happy birthday” the day before or a couple of days before, or after, and the response is “today is not my birthday.” I usually feel sad when I hear this because I want to celebrate (yes, it’s about me, their birthday is an excuse!), I’m already, or still, in a celebratory mood (not partying necessarily, just wishing happiness and wanting to shower the person with attention and affection). Why does the birthday have to begin and end during those 24 hours only?, I wonder. And “wasn’t your mother already suffering with pain and then contractions 1 or 2 days before you actually popped out anyway?” I argue? Ok… so that’s the background, fast forward back to this past May.

So I start wishing Nisarga happy birthday a couple of days before his birthday and for the first time in my life, the response is “thank you”. He smiles and gets excited and thanks me. What??? Really??? He gets it??? I make no comments. I repeat it several times throughout those days and continue after his birthday. And then he turns it on me and says, “No, today it’s your birthday, happy birthday to you!” What??? You gotta be kidding me! I had never been on the receiving end of that. So you mean it’s May and it’s my birthday? But it’s not my birthday, a little voice inside me says. Hilarious! So ok, ok ok ok!!! It’s my birthday. Lets celebrate. So in this way, we took turns celebrating our birthdays, so far never on the same day but that would be interesting now that I think of it… celebrating ourselves and each other.

So the night before we left Guadarrama we were having dinner with our loving hostess, Laura, and we were having wine and Nisarga toasted to my birthday which, he explained, we would be celebrating the next day in Toledo. She got all excited and started wishing me happy birthday. I told her that it wasn’t really my birthday the next day, and gave her a summary of what I’ve written above. She then told me about a character in Alice in Wonderland, the rabbit? maybe, who celebrates everyday that it’s not his birthday so there is only one day that he doesn’t celebrate. (I haven’t seen the movie or read the book, yes I know it’s a classic and that I’m missing out, I’m getting to it.) So here I thought I was original! HA! NOT! As Osho reminds us in one of his discourses, the great majority of don’t really have any original thoughts, we think we do but they all come from something we’ve been exposed to before, or at the very least they have been experienced before by others. It’s just because they are happening to us for the first time, that we think they may be original.


So happy birthday to all of you, thank you for reading this far! Today and every day, happy birthday to you!!! And to me…

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