Friday was my birthday. America’s birthday too.
Both equally made up.
Celebrations of images that never stay still.
Nostalgic handcuffs. Historic illusions. Imaginary lines.
The past needs releasing.
Because what we call memory is mostly a story kept alive by repetition: images, ideas, names, nations, narratives.
And birthdays? One of the most powerful anchors of identity.
We light candles for someone who was never born.
Sing songs to a story that keeps changing.
Celebrate another lap around the sun of… what, exactly?
The body that replaces itself every seven years?
The name that was chosen before you could speak?
The personality that shifts with mood and context?
All images... layers of meaning piled on top of
what you actually are.
None of it real.
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We have an image of ourselves.
That image compares, judges, maintains, improves.
And because we carry that image, we create images of others.
We don’t perceive reality directly...
we perceive a version our mind has created by layering images.
So, we relate to each other’s avatars... the images we hold of ourselves and everyone else.
We become mimetic machines, making copies of copies of copies... layered and filtered through culture, family, media.
And all of it reinforced, year after year, every time we say: “Happy Birthday.”
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I used to think birthdays mattered.
Another year wiser. Another year closer to becoming someone worth celebrating.
But now I see: the one we celebrate was never here to begin with.
Just awareness, playing dress-up in the costume of “me.”
Just presence, pretending to age.
Just being, convinced it needs a story to become.
We don’t celebrate you... we celebrate your avatar.
The carefully curated version.
The one with achievements and goals.
The one who has “made it” or is “working on it.”
But what about the one who’s aware of all that?
What about the one reading these words right now?
When was that one born?
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Take a moment. Actually look.
Can you find the birthday of awareness itself?
The moment when seeing began?
The anniversary of when you first knew you existed?
You can’t.
Because it was never born.
Because it will never die.
What we call “you” is just the echo of attention, curving back on itself and mistaking the loop for a person.
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We’ve learned feelings, emotions, thoughts.
We didn’t arrive with them. We don't need them.
No baby has them. They vanish in deep sleep.
And fade in flow.
They are the reaction of the image.
A temporary mist... a conditioned tint we've learned to apply, repeated till it became habit.
That’s what we lose when we worship the image:
the direct experience of being.
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So this year, no cake for the character.
No candles for the concept. No songs for the story.
Instead: a quiet recognition.
What’s here before the birthday began?
What remains when the celebration ends?
We call it emptiness. Or nothing.
But those are just words...
symbols to try and capture the inexplicable.
Call it what you want, it doesn't change.
The aware presence that was never young,
never old, never born.
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You think you’re another year older.
But you were never a year anything.
You think you’re celebrating life.
But you are life, appearing to celebrate.
You think there’s someone here having a birthday.
But there was never anyone here at all.
Only this. Only now. Only the seeing of it.
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So blow out the candles. Make a wish.
And then remember:
The one who wishes... was never born.
The one who celebrates... was never real.
The one who ages... was never here.
What’s left when the party ends?
Awareness that watches it all.
Being that has no birthday.
Presence that is never absent.
No one left to celebrate.
Everything already whole.
With love,
Zaheer
P.S. If you missed my letter from last week, read it here: Nothing to become. Just be
