April 11th always seems to be my birthday. Every year! It’s also my brother’s. We’re not twins.

This morning, my bathroom scale rudely reminded me that today was the day, with a cheerful “Happy Birthday!” My bathroom scale? WTF? Could there be a bit too much information floating in the air, available to even one’s digital scale?

That reality check reminded me that I’ve lived on borrowed, or bonus time, for about half of my life. The way I lived what now turns out to be the first half of it caused me to seriously believe that it would end way back then. Ask my first wife about that. It’s sheer luck that she didn’t do me in. Don’t get me wrong. She’s a gentle and peaceful lady, but I probably deserved being done in for a lot of my crap.

By now, half of my siblings have shuffled off to Buffalo, leaving this blue orb for what I’m sure they believed is a better place. I hope they found that to be true. What I hope for is not to have more birthdays or to be reunited with my departed family members on some mystical plane someday. It’s that as I keep stumbling along on this journey I can fill each day with the best experiences possible, and give back to this world in whatever way I’m able.

I’ve come to believe over time, that the only real purpose any of us have while we’re still on the green side, is to try to make life a little better for others. If we do that, in the end, our lives might have been worth something after all.

So, today I’ll celebrate the life I have. I’ll lift a glass to the prospect of another successful “trip around the Sun,” and keep an eye out for blue skies and smiling faces. Cheers!