A Sixty-Seventh Orbit: Notes from the Existential Ledger

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Birthday wishes—

are not balloons,

not sugar-script on melting cream—

But they are entries

in the damp ledger of existence.

Sixty-seven revolutions around this cosmic

not merely survival—

but the faint graphite mark

of having nudged society

a millimeter to the left of silence.

Thus, the tribe applauds.

Thus, the species signs its receipt.

Wishes are an existential fact.

This is true.

And yet—

in the basement of metaphysics

they are contraband,

smuggled across the doctrine

of negated meaning.

Friedrich Nietzsche left us a hammer

to test these idols—

to ask whether gratitude

is only a polished echo

inside an empty cathedral.

Once, in the culture of blue-lit walls,

a single word—

Thanks—

was flung like a coin

into the algorithmic fountain.

That was a strategy.

That was etiquette.

That was my former self.

But the law of metaphysical refusal

whispers:

even that lone syllable

confesses insufficiency.

Jean-Paul Sartre trembles in the margins—

Existentialism does not narrate utility.

It does not invoice purpose.

A wish

is an acknowledgment of being.

Gratitude

is the use-value of that acknowledgment.

So this year

I refused the shortcut.

I resolved

to answer each wish separately—

as if diving

through the heart’s salt ocean,

descending past coral barricades

that guard the market-value of meaning,

to gather pearl-shells

of white gratitude

from the seabed of refusal.

And here,

in this sixty-seventh sunrise,

through timelines, doorways, inboxes,

through the electric veins of distance

and the warm nearness of breath—

you have thickened

the gravity of my being.

To each luminous mind

that pressed a word upon my name,

I offer a pearl—

white, untheorized,

gleaming from the soft tissue of thanks.

From the artesian spring

that erupts beneath the ribcage,

I draw a copper cup

of living water—

let your eyes drink.

Yes—

I confess a quiet pride

in being able to return

even a fraction

of the weight you placed upon my existence.

And listen—

From now on

Your Ragavapriyan will not die.

Nor will his script.

Ink has outlived flesh before;

letters are stubborn fossils

that refuse burial.

May Ranganatha’s grace

fall upon every generous heart

that uttered a wish into my orbit.

Forever—

gratitude.

Forever—

love.

yours affectionately...

Ragavapriyan Tejaswi