What to Consider When Considering Birthdays

Birthdays can be tricky. They are pretty much an emotional rollercoaster that changes over the years, from ecstatic to depressive to indifferent.

When we’re kids, we love our birthdays, can’t wait for them, we throw parties (well, our parents throw our parties), invite all our friends, and at that point, that means inviting, more or less, all the kids from the class. We often get an extra day that is for adults only, and we get many, many presents, a huge cake, we blow out the candles, and we are super happy.
And then the teen years, more parties, but usually going out, fewer friends, but closer ones, different kind of fun, but still very fun, also feeling very important, loving extra candles on the cake, feeling adult, and loving it. And if that special girl or boy is around, it doesn’t get any better.
Twenties are similar, for a while at least, they start with parties, but at some point, they turn to dinners with close friends, and as we grow closer to thirties, they bring more and more questions.
We still love to celebrate, but age becomes heavier, starting to wonder about our goals, and by the time we step into our thirties, we start to wonder whether we accomplished those goals. Birthdays make us more self-aware, forcing us to revise our lives, and depending on how satisfied we are, we start to like birthdays less and less.
And as the decades go by, we start to feel older and don’t like the changes on our faces and our bodies, and birthdays become our enemies. And as we enter the senior years, they become less important because by then we have already had so many of them that we only mark the round ones, which at that point means we lived a long life and made it far.

Now, this doesn’t have to be the case, but unfortunately, it usually is.
It’s ok if you want to keep a low profile for your birthday, if you don’t like many people around you, or if you don’t like to make a big fuss about it. It’s ok to spend it with your best friend, significant other, your family, or even alone, if that is what makes you happy. What is not ok is to feel bad on your birthday, for whatever reason, the age, the looks, the job, the family, or the lack of it; this is your birthday, this is your day, the day you were rewarded with life, so don’t dwell on it, make it good and positive.
We talked about how it is normal to have both good and bad days, and some days are extra hard, and we have to work extra hard to stay positive, and sometimes we don’t want to, and that is fine, as long as those days are the exception, not the rule. The same goes for birthdays; don’t make a sad birthday the rule. This is the time to be grateful for how far we’ve come, for being here, for living our lives. Make it low-key if you want to, but don’t make it sad, don’t avoid it or pretend it does not exist, because you do exist and you deserve to be celebrated, in any way you desire.

Don’t let life bring you down. Don’t make birthdays about observing what you haven’t done, but what you have done. Don’t look at the wrinkles on your face as something that changed for the worse; look at them for the memories they keep. Don’t think about the people you’ve lost on the way, but the ones you get to find, think about how all of them enriched your life and how much they still will. Don’t think about what and who you’ve lost, but how much you’ve gained by knowing them. Don’t think about how much time has passed, but how much more you get to do, how much more you get to enjoy life in new (and old) ways.

So, if today is your birthday, Happy birthday to you!
And whether it’s coming in days or months, don’t be afraid of it, it is your day, how can it be a bad one? 🙂

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

– Abraham Lincoln