Tomorrow is my birthday. Last year I was flattered to receive several messages, from friends, acquaintances and even strangers. It was a pleasant experience and a buoying contradiction of my occasional feeling – I guess everybody has it sometimes – that none remembers my existence.

When I grew up in India, I had a clear edge over my friends. My birthday was always a public holiday: it was Gandhi’s birthday too. Father could skip office and take me somewhere special. Mother, who did not have to work either, could stay at home and cook something special for me. They made me feel special and, when my friends came, to my great pleasure they were treated royally too.

Now, I am not sure why, I seem to feel a little embarrassed when somebody tries to do something special on my birthday. It is pleasant to be with friends, perhaps drink a glass of wine. That is enough for me. What pleases is that someone remembers.

A birthday is a time not just for cakes and ale, but also for review and retrospection. Fortunate perhaps is the man who knows from the start where he wants to go and proceeds there along a straight line. Certainly, his life is simpler. VS Naipaul wrote that he knew from Day One he didn’t want to do anything but just write. That has not been my life.

As a kid, like other kids, I dreamed of a fun life, full of adventure. World War II was in full swing and I saw the planes roaring away in the bright Indian sky. I thought of being a pilot, not knowing that many of them were flying to their flaming end. Later I fell in love with cricket and imagined being like Don Bradman, the Australian wizard of a batsman.

Even later, after I heard the brilliant Hungarian writer, Arthur Koestler, speak in Kolkata, I borrowed a phrase from him to express my dream: I would like to walk on the line of intersection of the planes of thought and action. I worshipped the world of ideas, but I didn’t want to live there all the time; I also craved for the world of action. I remember how I admired Dag Hammarskjold, the UN Secretary General, who flew instantly to every trouble spot on the globe during the day, only to retire at night and jot his Markings. I still adore his definition of strength, “Only one feat… not to run away.”

But the world was hardly my oyster and I did not have many choices. I had to start making a living – quickly. I ended up working as an executive in two multinational groups, and later as an international development specialist with the UN and a diplomat. I grew up and lived in one country for many years, then moved to several countries in succession, and ended up living in another country.

I discovered that much professional work – certainly all that I have done – has plenty of opportunity for both thought and action. Most who perform it, however, do not care to walk on that line of intersection; they are all ideas or all action. The sad part is that often the ideas are mundane and the actions pedestrian. It is painful to push for a new idea or unusual action. I was reminded often of a character in a TS Eliot play who says, “In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.”

I have struggled to find fulfillment in my work, for work was important to me. I have also struggled to find fulfillment in the rest of my life, with mixed success. One is sometimes tempted to wonder why one has to struggle so much to achieve so little. Some friends seem to sail more smoothly and accomplish more easily. Perhaps they have a better handle on life.

Every birthday represents the crux of a curious anomaly. Everything you do is unimportant, because whatever you do matters little in the vast cosmos and in the eternity of time. All is forgotten and put aside. At the same time, everything you do matters greatly, for it makes a difference to the world around you and the people in front and back of you. Because of that it also makes a vast difference to your life.

Last year, my thoughtful Russian neighbor came in the evening with a birthday cake, on which she had planted a solitary candle. For me it was a good reminder. The birthday candle burns brighter when you remember that it will eventually burn out.

The writer is a Washington-based international development advisor and had worked with the World Bank. He can be reached at mnandy@gmail.com