I love other people’s birthdays–shopping and orchestrating gifts, surprises, baking cakes, and setting up decorations. I love birthdays so much because it fuels me with great satisfaction to remind the people whom I care about just how special they are to me. As I round the homestretch before my birthday, I can’t help but feel that snaking feeling of doom regarding my own this March–as much as I love birthdays and the celebrations of others
A birthday is the one day out of the year when the whole day is about you. In theory, it seems great, yet almost every year I always find myself in an inescapable funk. I’m not alone either. In countless conversations regarding the birthdays of others, I discover just how many people feel as though I once did, viewing their birthdays as something to dread rather than celebrate.
Birthdays can be met with disdain for a colorful amount of reasons. The whole point of a birthday is to be nothing but an indication of aging and its brought on existential crisis of fleeting time. A birthday could also just be disliked because one from birthdays past left a lingering sour taste. For me, my previously rather grim outlook was due in part to a feeling of disappointment. Every year, especially through my younger teens, as I rounded a new age I couldn’t help coming down with an insane case of FOMO on all the things I didn’t do when I was however many years old. The thought that I was getting older and there was still so much I had not done or experienced that other people younger than me had already done or experienced when they were my age was crushing. My birthday became a stressful event. I was so focused on making my age a Hollywood vision of what it should be, that I would always wind up overwhelmed out of my mind and in tears by the end of the day. The first birthday I can recall where I didn’t cry was my eighteenth. It was my one day of the year and I couldn’t let go of the fact that I wasn’t living out a delusional fantasy.
With the seconds running out until I finally wake up to a slew of “Happy Birthday!” text messages on my phone, I can’t help but reflect. What was it about my eighteenth birthday that made it different from the rest, and what exactly is it that makes me love the birthdays of another so much? What exactly is my inclination to wish someone else a happy birthday or bake them a cake, make them a card, or throw them a surprise party? A birthday in its essence is a celebration of one’s existence on this planet—it’s cliché, but after all, there is only one you. I think what made my eighteenth birthday different from all the rest was that I was when I realized that that birthday would be my last one at home before moving to college. I simply realized that I didn’t care how it looked or what would happen, I just wanted to be surrounded by those I love. Every birthday wish or act of festivity that I gift to another is in its simplicity because I’m happy they exist and how privileged I am to know them.
I know the feeling that sometimes a birthday wish, even a rather unexpected one, can feel forced or fake, but if you think about it, whoever it was that wished you a happy birthday had a reason to do so because at the end of the day, you have still made an impact on their life. Secondly, it never feels like you’ve made personal growth in the past year, or experienced those time and age-sensitive life milestones from the movies. Realistically, age doesn’t and shouldn’t define what you can and cannot do. Age is only a number, so don’t let it dictate your life story.
So as I round my next full rotation around the sun, I’ve traded in my birthday contempt for birthday gratitude. This year I find myself looking forward to my birthday, even though it looks a little different, being my first one away from home, my family, and old friends. Nonetheless, I’m excited to spend a day where I can surround myself with all the people whom I love, and my newfound family of friends. A birthday can feel like a burden, and life’s a lot to carry on two shoulders, but I urge you to remind yourself how special it is to have a day to remind yourself of how much you matter to the world, and who you matter to. I ask you to scream at the top of your lungs with the joy of how exciting it is to be alive and ride life’s roller coaster through your own eyes! On March first, I will light nineteen candles and make a wish, excited to see what I will make of the year ahead of me.