I know I just did one of these on Friday, but, hey it’s my birthday!

Your gift can be to indulge me in another Lyrical Life post.

Oh, really, darlings?! You shouldn’t have.

I don’t feel much older than last year.

Youth means different things to people. It may be a matter of convenience that I’ve redefined my own idea of “youth” as I’ve aged, but the word means something different to me now that I’m older.

It means being open to ideas and to holding on to your hope.  It’s retaining a little bit of idealism despite having seen some jacked up stuff go down in this thing we call life. It’s also holding on to happiness, passion, and laughter.

It’s that place where fear still lives, but it’s in the trunk of the car pressed underneath a 50 pack of diapers and pillow pets.  Young is that feeling you get as you sit with your best friend on the hood of your car at a rest stop somewhere on the way from Memphis to New Orleans, eating Doritos, drinking a Diet Coke and making jokes about potentially being the inspiration for Mississippi Burning II.

It’s about being unafraid to… well, to just be you no matter what.

We all start off that way: being okay with being us and not knowing how to be any different. Getting “old” takes that away from us.

In this sense, we don’t have to get old.  We can stay young forever.

For my birthday, as a gift from you, I would like you to be able to draw upon on the love and beauty in your surroundings and find the energy you need to fight the idea that you should be something other than what you are.

Do you think if I squeeze her hard enough, she'll just STAY this age?

Too tough to take photos with mom. It's a phase. Right?

Tariq and Nuha catching snowflakes in Niagra Falls (Canada). He's totally going to kill me for posting this. It was nice knowing you.

Fear not when, fear not why,
Fear not much while we’re alive,
Life is for living, not living uptight,
See ya somewhere up in the sky,
Fear not die, I’ll be alive for a million years, bye bye,
So not for legends, I’m forever young
My name shall survive
Through the darkest blocks, over kitchen stoves
…
With a little ambition just what we can become here,
And as the father passed his story down to his son’s ears,
Younger kid, younger every year, yeah
So if you love me baby this is how you let me know.
Don’t ever let me go, that’s how you let me know, baby

(Forever young, I want to be forever young, do you really want to live forever, forever)

– “Young Forever,” Jay Z featuring Mr. Hudson