My Birthday!; Or The Earth Runs Fast.

Today, it’s my birthday. Twenty-eight years spent spinning along with this blue marble. Twenty-eight years of good memories, and entropy. Can’t defy the laws, I have it under good authority the Universe can’t even trip the life immortal. Oh well, so it goes. A fantastic twenty-eight years.

My birthday is not impressive. I am a dot on a blip on a relativistic scale. As someone who thinks on a far more cosmic scale, I’ve found myself thinking bigger. Larger. Over the holidays, I started thinking about the upcoming New Year, my upcoming birthday. I began mulling over the simple, obvious, yet entertaining notion: what exactly is a year?

Not in the sense of memories, or moments cobbled together in the illusory concept of self-experience and identity. But rather, what exactly is a year?

The first response I had was: Well, a year is 365 days. You learn that from a young age. A year consists of 365 days, broken up into twelve months. That’s a lot of days. Relatively, to us cosmic microants. We learn this, and we measure it, and it seems pretty cool, I guess. However, this wasn’t satisfactory to me. Bare with me, we just might approach something neat.

So then I asked myself: What the fuck is 365 days? Let me appreciate this further! As we have been indoctrinated into knowing, feeling, believing, 365 days is the amount of days it takes for us to complete our ellipse around the sun. Now we’re starting to get cosmic. In the span of one year, over the course of twelve months, broken into 365 days, we travel around the sun in an elliptical orbit. That is what I’m celebrating today. It has been 365 days since the Earth was in this point in its ellipse around the Sol God.

My friends, we are rocketing through outer-space together. Let us never forget this. As I type this, I am on self-sustaining Space Marble rocketing through the orbit. I am not merely the only one aging. I am, you are, we are. So is the Earth. The Sun. Everything.

So now we’re fucking cooking, right? This is sort of impressive now.

Let us continue. What exactly is this ellipse around the Sun? Well, it’s a pattern that we’re holding as we are pulled around in a fixed pattern through a solar system. G’damn, that’s sort of cool. However, it is even cooler when you consider the specifics of the ellipse. Since my last birthday (and on yours too), the Earth has downright boogied. It is fucking moving, man. Since my last birthday, and I’m fudging here, since the orbit is actually  365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, we’ve gone far.

Damn far.

Around the Sun.

We’ve traveled 584,020,178 miles. Just look at that number. Not only that, but to pull it off, we’re fucking hustling, man! We’re moving 67,062 miles an hour. Just think of that. Since the last hour has passed, we’ve traveled 67,062 miles. Good lord. Now that shit is impressive.  People say we can’t get shit done in a year. The Earth doesn’t want to hear it. She’s traveled nearly 585,000,000 miles. She’s fucking pooped. Meanwhile us, Jackoffs McRealityTelevision can’t even get to the gym. Woof at us, man.

Now, as I said, my birthday isn’t impressive unto itself. Not to me. But the Universe that I’m a part of definitely is; it definitely gets shit done in a year. I am, we are part of something fucking fantastic. If you think the Earth’s orbit is impressive, consider how pathetic and miniscule the Earth and Sun are, relative to everything else in the Universe. We are not impressive, we are all impressive. This is one goddamn gorgeous machine we are part of, and that is what is happening as I type this, as I age a year.

I’m twenty-eight. The Earth runs fast. The Universe isn’t a piece a paper in a book, it’s something we experience constantly.

I love it. Happy birthday to me.