In your beginning is your end....

I love oxymorons - phrases that seem to be contradictions, such as "less is more" or "more is less." Our writing word for today is "birthday." I immediately thought of the title of this post. With all the joy of coming into this world, there is the sad fact that you will leave it at some point.

On the positive side, however, by being born you get to explore the following:

1. You have inherited a sun sign. It might not be a great road map, but it could give you some clues, as to directions that might be taken, at critical points, along the way. Yogi Berra, for example, had a great sense of direction, he often said,  "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." or "Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded." These are also borderline oxymorons - yes, life is a conundrum.

2. You have been given body parts that determine whether you are male or female. Your own idea of whether you consider yourself male, female, either or neither is up to you. At your birth, however, you were assigned a biological identity. This is not a social identity. The latter, will come later, once you're socialized :)

3. You have been given a culture, possibly a religion, and most certainly a nationality. Some of these you will change as you journey along. For example, I consider myself an Irish Italian with German roots. Raised by German grandparents, I ate rye bread and black pudding sandwiches, to the embarrassment of my Irish grandmother, who reminded all of us - there were 19 cousins - on a regular basis that we were Irish and could, therefore, fight with the best of them. How I came to love pasta is a mystery.

4. With your culture and nationality you will learn a language, possibly several languages. You may, in fact, go on to learn many more. You may, even, invent your own language or choose not to use language at all. Personally, I lean toward the invented language. I use the word spreckles from time to time. It's a cross between sparkles and freckles, as in, "The sunlight speckled the water."

5. Finally, for this post anyway, you will develop certain dominant characteristics. You will be either outgoing or retiring, emotional or cerebral, factual or intuitive, structured or flexible. These are the Myer-Briggs personality types. I am actually retiring, cerebral, intuitive and flexible. That is, I never like to make plans too far ahead. I hate being bound by commitments, especially on a day when I just want to explore something unplanned and intuitive, always alone - people are distracting....oh, and did I mention I have trouble with empathy, unless you're a cat, of course, you're on your own :)