Whenever I look at photos of buildings in Iraq, Libya, Syria turned into lifeless rubble, I feel sad and angry

Sad and angry because I know that America has destroyed these countries – Iraq, Libya and Syria. America – for its endless lust for oil and dollars and contracts and power and hegemony – has bombed and missiled these nations so much and so many times that these nations and the people there are back to the caveman days. So sad and angry because America itself continues to build and enjoy and use new skyscrapers and new bridges and new tunnels while the powerless people of these destroyed-by-America countries are slaughtered each day by America and forced to live like animals.

Something unprecedented and unforeseen happened today - I wasn't concerned about how many birthday wishes I received on Facebook

Does this mean that the 30s are actually having an effect on me? Maybe. Because until today, as far back as I can remember, I always used to check - multiple times a day - the inward flow of birthday greetings for me on Facebook [on my birthday]. I would feel very excited to see more and new wishes pouring in, but not today. Today I checked FB maybe only once or twice, and I even didn't care much about who or how many wished me. Maybe this has some connection to my overall significantly reduced usage of FB. Or maybe it's just that I'm no longer bothered/worried about whether or not other people are wishing me.

There's an important lesson here. We all have certain beliefs about who we are, how we like to act, what things we like, what priorities we have, what are our dreams, what all we covet, and so on. We consider these values sort of constant and stable, and a description of who we think we are. But the lesson here is that we're not a n-tuple of some constant values. We're changing. Our beliefs about our own self need to change as we change. These can't be constant. I cannot forever hold the belief that I love to check the birthday wishes pouring in for me on FB. I could be and probably am changing in other ways too. So must my beliefs about myself.