Reflections on Randsday

Today we're celebrating Ayn Rand's birthday, here at Creatures of Prometheus.  Harry Binswanger has come up with a really great way of marking the occasion: the creation of a new holiday, Randsday.  

To celebrate Randsday, you do something not done on any other holiday: you give yourself a present. Randsday is for getting that longed-for luxury you ordinarily would not buy for yourself. Or for doing that long-postponed, self-pampering activity you cannot seem to fit into your chore-packed schedule...On Randsday, if you do something that you ordinarily would think of as “fun,” you do it on a different premise and with a deeper meaning: that you need pleasure, you are entitled to it, and that the purpose and justification of your existence is: getting what you want—what you really want, with full consciousness and dedication.

Getting what you want, with full consciousness and dedication.  Getting what you really want, not just as a whim or an impulse, but, rather, getting what you really want out of your life.

Randsday is about pursuing your happiness. It's about recognizing that your life belongs to you, and only to you, and that you only get one, and it's short, and so you better get busy, because if you don't pursue your own happiness it's not like someone is just going to come around and hand you some.  You have to earn it.

So when you treat yourself to that special Randsday present (which, for me, is that Kindle Touch I've been wanting for weeks now), remember these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  

Your life belongs to you.  Go live it.