My sister Virginia turned 23 this weekend, and she pissed and moaned because she was now officially one year from being out of her early twenties, and there’s all the inherent problems that go along with being labeled “mid-twenties” and she feels old and yadda yadda yadda.
Clearly, she is completely insane, because mid-twenties was only “old” when *I* was turning 24. Now I am in my thirties, and the scales have fallen from my eyes and I can see that mid-twenties is the prime of life, the flower of youth, the golden age of life when all is honey and wine and fresh strawberries.
She went out last night with her friends to two bars. Not one, two. She drank like a parched fish and woke up this morning and went to work and felt “a little hung over. I stayed in Friday and Saturday nights and played cards with my friends and drank Diet Dr. Pepper and was in bed by 12:15. The last time I tried drinking copiously, I had a hangover that lasted 3.3 days and involved me not being able to eat anything more spicy that a turkey sandwich with salt and pepper until my gastro-intestinal system had finished trying to tie itself into a hangman’s noose.
She’s healthy as golden lab in a commercial for flea prevention, and I’m taking enough supplemental fiber doses daily to re-grout our swimming pool.
So Virginia, I say to you today, Happy Birthday. And may you get no older, but only wiser, from today forward.
“Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love.”
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
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