man's search for a birthday

I'm turning 27 tomorrow, so here are the 27 lessons...

We're not doing that.

This e-mail is going to be raw and unfiltered.

Let's dive into:

• my (somewhat unhealthy) fascination with Auschwitz-related books

• why neurodegenerative diseases are scarier for me than the latest horror from A24

• coping with what was and what is not (and how I use that for growth and not another way of self-depreciation)

My grandpa passed almost two years ago now.

We've shared the same house for at least 19 years, and I have seen him only twice in the last year of his life.

I have some questions I never got to ask him because I was too scared.

To stir up some unwanted trauma, or to get some info that would never leave my head.

You see, my grandpa was one of the strongest people I knew.

Unfortunately, when he was a teenager, German forces captured him.

They threw him into a concentration camp and made him go through strenuous labor.

He saw horrors that I was too afraid to talk to him about.

I did some digging myself. I've read the book Man's Search For Meaning 3-4 times at this point.

It has helped me understand myself, and what I stand in the world for.

And maybe it's a way to heal generational trauma embedded in the DNA.

Now, I'm reading The Choice by Edith Eger, who also knew the author of the referenced book, Viktor Frankl.

They both survived the prison camps that were constructed to break them.

They both hung on to hope like my grandpa did almost 80 years ago.

My grandpa managed to live up until he was 95 years old.

But, the last years were years when he was forgetting things.

It started with small details, and at the end, he didn't know where he was most of the time.

Apart from old age, he also suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

It made his life increasingly difficult.

It made me afraid for my father, my brother, and me.

To see such a strong man crumble.

I'm another year older, and I've got some countermeasures in place.

I've been running to keep my heart healthy, but there are other areas of fitness I need to address.

Because I can't imagine a life where I don't remember:

• my 21st birthday party

• my first love

• the moment when I finally believed in myself

Those are life-defining moments for me, and forgetting them would be, for me, like not living at all.

There is more genetic burden in my family, and in the recent year, I've become more aware of the importance of health.

That's why I purchased Outlive by Peter Attia, a specialist in the area of longevity.

I liked his podcast appearances.

Hopefully, after making my way through it, I will be a little wiser when it comes to overall body health.

When my next birthday comes around, my muscles will be a bit bigger.

I will finally be able to do the exercises I'm too tense to do now. That's what I wish for myself.

Now, the last point.

During birthdays we face the realization that we are indeed mortals.

Another hole on the big belt of our life.

There is a correlation to a lower mood on that particular day.

It's because we see all the things we didn't manage to accomplish over the year.

But we tend to underestimate the things that we did.

For the last couple of years, I try to write all the things that I recognize as somewhat memorable from the past year.

Something like this:

• I walked [enter value] km collectively

• I bought myself [put in the thing]

• I’ve met this person who resulted in [put in result]

• I traveled to [place name]

• I stopped [put the habit in]

You could list many more things.

I look at the list, and I reflect. I think about the happy parts and the disappointing facts.

I try to do that from an outside perspective, and then rate if a younger version of me would go "heck yeah, what a cool life."

Most years, that outside outlook is positive.

This year is one of them.

Love you,

Piotr