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Today I turn forty-eight; the good news is that in hexadecimal I can say it’s only thirty. It doesn’t really matter, it’s just a geek joke, I have no problem with my age.

This birthday in particular has been wonderful, because I’m just back from an extraordinary vacation with my family in a magical place, but the magic didn’t come so much from the place as from the experience of being kids again.

That is what makes you younger: knowing that in the end your family is fine, seeing them content, seeing them happy.

I have said it several times: you can’t be happy. Happiness is not something permanent, it’s something temporary, a state, to be enjoyed as intensely as possible. Same as sadness. How can you enjoy the good without knowing the bad? It is that fundamental duality of nature that we must learn to appreciate. (Actually it’s not a duality, it’s a multiplicity, but I’m not going to get any deeper today.)

It’s a great day, a beautiful day. I’m proud of the life I have led, with its storm clouds, its sunsets and its glorious dawns. Forty-eight trips around the sun; I hope several more orbits are coming.

And as is tradition on this blog, I’m leaving you a video as a gift, this time one of my favorites, "Dreamer", by Supertramp, performed by Roger Hodgson.

It’s important to be a dreamer, but you have to go beyond where the character in this song stands and take action to make those dreams come true.