The Day Before a Birthday, and the Things That Actually Matter

I am writing this the day before my birthday. That detail matters—not because birthdays are momentous in themselves, but because they sharpen perspective. The calendar turns whether we want it to or not.

Another year arrives. And if we are honest, birthdays increasingly become less about celebration and more about stock-taking. I am in reasonably good health.

I am working, teaching, writing, raising children. By most external measures, things are fine. And yet I feel older than I used to.

Not in the abstract sense of age, but in a very specific, cumulative way. Almost every week now, an email or a text arrives with news that someone has passed away. Often, it is not a close friend or family member.

It is a parent of a childhood classmate. A familiar face from middle school. Someone whose h