Birthday Do The ShanTung Way

We all celebrate birthdays, don’t we?

In some form or other we do. The western way is to have a cake in front of you when everybody sing a song to usher in your moment and then you blow off the candle.

Maybe the blowing off of the candle is an attempt to halt the process of time and in that way we never grow old. Quite an act of denial if this is true! And actually quite self-centered. It is all about “me”.

There is one way of looking at birthdays which I like. I find the thought behind this quite meaningful. A little Confucian but still very meaningful.
When I was a young boy, there was this man who hails from Shantung province in China. On his birthday, he would sleep out side the house without blanket or pillow, braving the cold and if it rains, much worse. He says that it is their way of remembering the pains that their mothers go through in giving birth to them. It is a day for expression of gratitude. He says that in China it was much worse especially for those born in the winter months.

Care to think about this every time a candle is blown?