Birthday Surprises

     I have a really weird theory. Ever since I stopped giving the juvenile birthday parties   the cake-cutting ritual   I watch out for day-spoilers, and specifically, birthday spoilers. They come in all sizes, sometimes singly, sometimes in hordes of hundreds. They can be nasty, and they *ouch* hurt.
     So, birthday spoilers are things, or events that always are out on my birthdays to spoil them. And ever since I turned 9, I've had at least one spoiler on each birthday. Sometimes, it's a small tiff. Sometimes, it's a fall-out with some friend. Yes, on a birthday. And sometimes, it is boredom, and at other times, it's mood swings.
     This birthday brought me all of them   gifts all right, but also fights, fall-outs, boredom, disappointment, bad news, mood swings. But good things are born from bad things, if one can and may categorise things and events as good or bad. I realised that one must live, not like creepers, forcing all of our burdens on someone else; or even like trees, accepting all the burden people around you try to share with you. That one must learn to say no, and that life's ours, to do what we may, with it.
     But the most important thing I realised is that I must live without guilt. And that does not mean living with pride. It is living devoid of guilt, avoiding conceit. And for the first time in who-knows-how-many-years, I empathise with Siddhartha Gautama. Maybe renunciation is not too bad an idea.