I wished a friend a happy b-day on FB, and he replied that he'd totally forgotten about it. That tends to happen once you no longer love turning another year older. -Renegade
I'm not that old (or so I keep insisting) and I've long since lost the love of turning another year older. I don't usually completely space my birthday but perhaps that's because, like your friend, someone will remind me. I'll tell you though, I've had a hard time keeping track of my age since I was 19.
-Deozaan
That might be a symptom of thinking you're secretly immortal - or at least not truly believeing you aren't.
Funny thing about holidays, birthdays, and serendips...
When you're younger, you tend to breeze by them. Christmas parties? I'll pass. My birthday? Who cares?
But as you get older (and I don't mean standing at Death's door) it suddenly dawns on you one day that there's a significantly smaller number of them before you than there are behind you. And you now realize on a very deep and personal, rather than a purely intellectual level, that they will be coming to an end much sooner than you originally thought. At which point, they all become much more precious.
When you're flush, you tend not to count your change. When you're down to your last $1000, you look at calendars - and start watching every penny.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why, as people get older, they appear more "sentimental" or maudlin to those who still haven't realized (on a gut level) that they really won't be living forever. As in:
really...
won't...
be.
It's not so much older people get sentimental. It's more like they've just been...humbled by the realization that nothing is going to last forever. Not even them.
And once that happens, you tend to "lighten up."
I came to a conclusion this morning...