Life. This four-letter word has complex meanings. Some may its goodness mixed with chaos, experience mixed with regrets, love mixed with hate, or something completely different. Life is new breath to birth purpose and vitality, mixed with madness to add a little flavor. Life holds significance. It says that you’re here, alive with many chances to mess up and get back up again. Perfect is nowhere near what life is. Instead, there’s consistency. Life has many gifts, and one of them is age—the marking of a new era…just for you.
Aging is a beautiful thing. Why are we so opposed to it? Why can’t we gladly say we’re twenty or forty or sixty? Each of those has 365 days within, rolling over and over to reach the markings of a new beginning. It’s a blessing to survive 365 days. Don’t you think? Well, if you don’t, I’m here to tell you. You surpass the people that couldn’t go any further. They probably wish they could’ve reached twenty, or even ten years. Yet, on your special day, you’re drowning in despair. You loathe the words “Happy Birthday” rolling off anyone’s lips. Maybe it even makes you gag. You oppose the site of cakes and balloons and presents. For what? All because you don’t want to be twenty or forty or sixty? It’s giving ungrateful. You must celebrate. No matter how your day went before or that you must go to school or work. This is about you. I don’t support narcissism, but you better humbly recognize that it’s your day and you deserve to celebrate yourself even if no one else will. Don’t sulk and whimper. Grow up.
Here’s some advice. Make it into a weekend, a week or even a month. Like Drake said: “It’s yo month and you know it.” I need you to act like you know it. And like I say, I don’t support narcissism, but I truly desire for you to enjoy the marking of a new era. It’s a new start, filled with wisdom and grace from the year before. You get to make better choices, choose better friends, live healthier, and just make the 20th or 40th or 60th the best one yet. They say the best is yet to come, right? Live by that. Don’t wallow over what friend you lost, what job fired you, or what school failed you. Whatever the previous year held, leave it behind. Look ahead and enjoy.
I like to say, “Life is a beautiful thing with trials that turn into triumphs.” You know, maybe that’s the perfect definition. Make the best of what you’ve got. Choose gratitude. Choose love. Choose what’s for you and eliminate what’s against you.
The celebration of life…I think it’s time you do better.