“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you discover the reason why.”
Mark Twain
You will see this aphorism all over the internet.
Mark Twain never wrote or said it.[1]
Its origin is unknown, first recorded usages beginning with the non-specific, ‘It has been said’ and so on.
Setting that aside, the statement resonates with many people. When it was debunked on the Mark Twain studies website, one comment was: ‘I don’t care who said it, I still maintain that it was one of the most trenchant comments about real life ever made.’ Fair enough. The absence of a source for an aphorism doesn’t make it invalid as someone’s thought.
Personally, I think it is empty. Why is your birthday one of the (two) ‘most important days in your life’? It happens. You have no awareness of it, no control, no memory. You didn’t cause it, biology did. Joyous though the birth of a child is, it is also universal and banal.
The starting problem is what does ‘the most important day of your life’ mean? Very little, in my view, as becomes clear when we briefly review what people say about it.
Psychology Today
“What’s the most important day of your life? The answer to that question is simple. Today.”[2]
Helen Keller
“The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.”
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, Chapter Four.[3]
A blogger
One blogger begins with the Mark Twain “quote” but refines it into a credible position; that the most important day of his life was when he found God:
“The most important day of my life
After praying that prayer, immediately I felt a tremendous sense of relief. I could feel the guilt and the weight of my sin and my lostness lifted from me. I had a deep experience of God’s love for me; that He really was now my Heavenly Father. A peace I had never known settled into my soul, which was quickly followed by great joy. … I’ve been doing my best to follow Jesus for many decades now, but I will never forget that night. It was the most important day of my life because it changed me from spiritually lost and dead to found, made alive, and gave me my purpose.[4]
The question was asked of Redditors: What was the most important day of your life? Of 160 responses, here is the first page, with extraneous comment, names etc, removed, and numbering added. Bear in mind that the page is live and the following was downloaded about 9pm onwards on 30 March 2024.
1. The day I randomly decided to fly to California for the cast party of an online musical I acted in. In the same night I:
-Met my now-husband
-Met my best friend (who officiated for our wedding)
-Met each member of my now 4ish year long DnD game I run
-Got to meet (and get drunk with) several of my personal acting/gaming heroes who showed up to the party as a surprise
-Had one of those actors tell me they had an inside joke about how much they liked my performance in their personal group text
And now, 6 years later, I am living in California with the love of my life, in a good career that I never would have joined if I had stayed in my home state. All from one night.
2. In 1981 I stopped by a jewelry store to get a new watch battery installed. I recognized the young woman behind the counter as a co-worker at a theme park from five years before. We reminisced about those days and went out for lunch together. Coming up on 41 years of marriage! It was a good day.
3. The day I innocently messaged this girl on Facebook that I wished I’d gotten to know her better before graduating college. We’ll soon celebrate our 12 year wedding anniversary, have 3 kids, and I’m as infatuated with her as the day we went on our first date. If not for that message, we very likely would never have seen each other again.
4. My high school crush (no joke! He was the classic jock. I was a nerd.) messaged me on Facebook 19 years after we graduated. I friended him first. But, I wouldn’t have ever messaged him. We’re celebrating 6 years together in April.
5. The day I became sober from drugs and alcohol. October 24th 2022.
6. When I boarded a red eye flight to a city I’d never been to under the pretense of getting sober. My life now is completely different (for the better) because I did what was necessary to be on that flight when it left the gate. I don’t have a shred of doubt that getting on that plane saved my life.
7. The day that I decided not to transfer from my university to a different, arguably better school purely for purposes of more fun and more life experiences. …
8. The day i was born.
9. The day I bet on myself, applied and interviewed for a management position in my company. …
10. My first date with the woman that is now my wife. I was planning to commit suicide and met her about a month before the date I had picked.
11. The day my fiance [sic] proposed.
12. The day my parents signed the adoption papers. In the most important sense, that was when my life began, my first six months have nobody who knows any details, including me.
13. When my daughter was born. My wife almost died …
14. The day my wife and I started going out.
15. I know it sounds silly but when I was 11 my best friend invited me to an all girl sleepover and it was one of the best nights of my life. I had been struggling with my gender identity and why I felt the way I did, and it was one of the only times I was able to forget about it all and just be myself. …
16. Daughters [sic] birth…
17. Transferred from community college to a university and one of the first days we had people discuss internships in DC.
All of these are understandable and valid. The most important days in our life are the milestones: meeting our partner, having a child, overcoming addiction. One not mentioned here but probably in earlier comments: the day of your terminal illness is diagnosed. To assert that one’s own birth and finding out why you are here are the two most important days is disrespectful to those who have a different view.
A large part of the problem is that word ‘important’. The thoughtful people on Reddit mostly identify transformational moments, a change in their life. ‘Significant’ days would be better than ‘most important’ and there should be no assertion as to what they are for everybody. To paraphrase the Reddit question, we should ask: What have been the most significant days in your life?
If someone (see number 8) thinks it is the day they were born, fine. That’s their privilege.
Okay, I’ll step up. The most significant days in my life (positive and negative) include: the choice I made about what subject to study, English or Law; leaving private practice; the first date with my future wife; moving to the alien South…; walking away from a very well-paid job for the sake of my health; the day I was told my cancer was at Stage 4. There was a peace then, an acceptance.
Gally Maxwell
25 April 2024
[1] https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-the-two-most-important-days-of-your-life/ and https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/06/22/why/
[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/proceed-your-own-risk/202210/the-most-important-day-your-life
[3] https://www.holloway.com/g/helen-keller-the-story-of-my-life/sections/chapter-iv
[4] https://medium.com/koinonia/the-most-important-day-of-my-life-ef7e1e6db157