A Birthday Note.

No, not my birthday, but that being celebrated today by one of the world’s rarest creatures: somebody I’m fond of. In the process of offering greetings, it occurred to me that I don’t think I ever celebrated any of my birthdays. It always seemed to me that the very concept of celebration only makes sense in the context of meaningful things like achievement or deliverance. Celebrating something which just comes along every year whether you want it to or not always struck me as being a bit strange.

And that led me to thinking about how the advertisers view age. Ads aimed at young people are all about fun, excitement, adventure, sex, romance and aspiration. Those aimed at the elderly take as their themes concepts such as slowing down, becoming increasingly reliant on younger people and gadgets, and generally sinking into a state of relative worthlessness. However brightly they are presented, the subliminal message seems to be that ageing is a cause not for celebration, but for the onset of shame. I’m tempted to wonder whether this is one time when they’ve got it right.