Plus One or Minus One

“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

Every once in year there is that special day in the lives of everyone. The day we commemorate our grand entries into the world, that reminds us the day we took our first breaths,the day we began our great sojourn, the day our loving mothers travailed in labour and prevailed. The day our tiny crying voices wiped away every pain of delivery our mothers suffered and brought laughter and happiness to everyone around us. The day we mark our birthdays.

You would agree with me that birthdays are considered one of the most important days in a person's life. Little wonder people attach so much relevance to it,(some probably more than others).There are plenty relationships that have been strained because one party forgot the birthday of the other or did not mark it in a way that was expected of them.

I do not blame them much, a birthday is special and the celebrant ought to be treated as such.

It is common also to see or hear people wish birthday celebrants 'happy plus one', or the celebrants themselves declaring 'I'm plus one today'!

Well I tell people around me not to wish me that. In fact I would be happier if you told me 'happy minus one'.

Strange? Maybe. But I have my reasons.

The Bible in Psalm 90:12 ;Psalms 139:16;Psalms 39:4 and Job14:5 as well as other scriptures teaches us that OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED.

Since this is the case, it follows that every human has a specified number of days/years to live.

Let us take that number to be X and your age to be Y. What this means is that every year, the number of years becomes X-Y.

For example, if God has ordained 200years for me, and today I am 49 years old. Then what I have left to live is 200-49 years.

What I am saying in essence is that with every birthday we mark, 365 or 366 days, 52 weeks, 12 months, 1 year has been deducted from our lifespan. With each birthday,  we move one year closer to our inevitable end.  We actually turn minus one (-1) on our birthdays instead of plus one. 

But we get too carried away in the euphoria of our mew ages that we forget to realize that we are of a truth growing old.

So before you throw that epic bash, shut the city down or paint the town red with your birthday parties, ask yourself some questions;

'Is the past year worth celebrating?'.

'What achievement have I made, (apart from growing old), in the last year?'

How many lives have you affected positively? Has your existence in the last 12 months added to society in anyway? 

If you can not boldly answer any of these questions, then permit me to say you have wasted a whole year of your live. And it is irreversible, irretrievable. 

Don't get me wrong,  it is not easy to see a new year in an era when death has become so common and rampant irrespective of age. We ought to be grateful for every second we live. But it is not enough to celebrate mere existence.

Make every single day count, knowing that any day that passes can never come back. Strife to be better, endeavour to leave a mark after your sojourn. A wise man, Albert Pikes said, 

“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”Do not forget YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED.  Remember this and stay humble, and make every single one of it count count.