Birthdays are a funny thing. They're yearly reminders that no matter what we do in our lives we're constantly growing a little older. Hopefully we're growing a little wiser along the way. For a lot of people birthdays are like annual life checkpoints where you can confirm your progress. Some checkpoints are better than others, but I suppose as long as your checking them off there's always hope that next year will be an improvement.
For awhile in my twenties I didn't really like my birthday all that much. I would get slightly down about how my life wasn't going where I wanted it. The birthday was just a cosmic post-it note that said I hadn't reached where I wanted to go. In actuality birthdays are no more significant than New Year's Day, but we make them important because while they may be some arbitrary date on the calendar, it's our arbitrary date. So I would look at my life on my birthday and say "I'm 25 and I haven't..." What I should have been doing was looking at my life and saying "I'm only 25 and I've done..." That way I could look at what I've done, what I wanted to do, and what I could have done better. Then the next year would be something to look forward to rather than something looked back on with regret.
The strange thing is that while my birthday is important to me, I couldn't tell you what I was doing on the majority of them. In fact I can only clearly remember the last two years, and that's simply because the difference between them was night and day. As a kid I didn't always have birthday parties. They were more like birthday gatherings. I've never had a lot of people that I call friends at any one time and even those that were friends, only a few of them were the kind that I'd want at my birthday. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I had enough friends to have what could be called a party. Even then I can only clearly remember one actual party. That's not to say there weren't others before or after that, I just can't remember them anymore. The years between 17 and 29 are just a blur of memories, which sort of plays like a birthday montage in my head. Actually when my birthday comes to mind several things appear. Green grass, pizza, baseball, moon boots, sex, Star Wars, graduation, friends, and candy cigarettes.
Something I learned awhile back is that birthdays aren't always for you. Often they're for the people in our lives. Hopefully you have someone in your life that likes having you around. A birthday is specific date to celebrate that. If you're like me, you may believe that the celebration should be year long. So even if you're not a fan of your own birthday, someone out there is. Why do you think so many people get cornered at a restaurant while the staff sings Happy Birthday. Often we show our love to others by tormenting them with sappy displays of affection.
Another weird thing about birthdays is that when they happen I don't feel different. It's only been a year so how much could have changed? Maybe not all that much between now and the last one, but the changes are happening when you're not even looking. Look at the person you were ten years ago compared to who you see in the mirror today. That didn't happen over night. With every birthday we are a slightly different person until one day we look back and try to pinpoint when the change happened in the first place.
I've also started looking at who has shared my birthday with me over the years. Some people were there only once or twice, but there were some regulars. In some cases the people who were there one year weren't back the next. Just how life goes during that year long journey around the sun. I also makes me wonder who will be there at my next birthday and who will be absent.
If you think about it your birthday marks when the world changed. Before your birthday happened, life was different, even if you weren't your parents' first child. Now that you're here, it's time to enjoy the fact that every year you get to celebrate your mark on the world, even if the price gets a little higher each time.
