Birthday wishes

My birthday is on Christmas day. In case you haven’t noticed if you’ve been reading this blog for some part of its 9-year history. But what you may not know, is that, though many think it’s “lovely” to have a Christmas Birthday, I don’t really like it. Apart from being somewhat overshadowed by one of the most important holidays of the year, people tend to forget you amidst all the universal celebrations. And it’s just not the same with having an entire day all to yourself. When people can legitimately forget your birthday for not knowing of it.

But there is also the other side: the fact that you get a clearer picture of your friends and acquaintances during this day. Birthdays are a milestone and an indication of who cares. Because those who do, will take five minutes of their time – or less – to send a wish your way, one which will brighten your day and make you feel loved. It doesn’t take much, but to the person in question it makes a huge difference.

Birthdays, like a good friend told me, are a starting point. That day when the counter returns to zero and you start again, afresh, setting new goals for the year ahead, reflecting on what went well, what didn’t, who was there, who shouldn’t have been, and who wasn’t, where you wasted time and where your energy was invested in the year that passed. It is a day that fills you with delight, love, ambition, and determination to enshrine the saying that we grow older becoming wiser (and prettier).

It’s the day when you decide who and what is worth your time and concern. Friendships are evident even in a simple ‘happy birthday’ wish. Because no one is too busy or too distracted with anything else – whatever that may be – to not wish you something nice during the most significant day of your year.

As you blow out the candle on your birthday cake, the wish is almost always the same – more so now during these times – for our loved ones to be well and healthy, to be surrounded by love and positive vibes, to be optimistic that better things are on their way. And to know deep inside that our best days are still to come.

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears”. — John Lennon

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Alternating circles

Birthdays, a good friend told me, are the perfect date to set new goals, to rethink your stance, to start anew, because it is on this day that your life began; that you began. It is on our birthday that we realise how many things change in a year. How different our lives are now from 12 months ago, or from simply one month ago. Time passes by rapidly and if we are not careful, life will pass us by.

It’s not to ponder on the past and forget to live, though. Strength comes from constantly moving forward, continuously evolving and wanting to improve every aspect of yourself and your quality of life.

Hope springs from standing in the dark and looking for the stars. It’s the pressure we impose on ourselves to never give up because better things are coming and the need to believe this is true.

We need to change habits every once in a while. It’s part of the circles that close and new ones that open. To find new people that will enrich our lives and make us better, who will match our level.

Unfortunately, not everyone who comes into our lives stays. And we realise that the people who we thought we couldn’t live without are no longer a necessary part of our lives. There are those who never fought for us, who could live without us first and who left on their own accord. Those who proved they were unworthy of all our love and devotion because they didn’t know how to appreciate or reciprocate it. Those who blamed us for their own inadequate behaviour and demanded things they themselves could not provide. Those who make us regret ever giving them a part of our lives, our world, our heart. Because in the end, those who matter are those who value us, who remain no matter what, who always remember you on your special day, who are there regardless everything else and who love unconditionally.

Each person is responsible for their own attitude and the way they behave – be it their reactions, their words, their actions or inaction, their decency (if any).

It takes time to realise things we were so used to overseeing. Because it takes time for the mind to change course, to alternate its circle of thinking. Time won’t heal your wounds, it will just make it easier for you to live with the scars.

Birthdays are a chance to evaluate where you stand in chasing your dreams and the life you desire. To set new goals, to get back on track with what you want. And what most people want are simple things: to be healthy, happy and loved.

A new birthday year offers 365 new opportunities to do that. To find our way again and make it a better year. Let’s do our best to make it worth it.

Changing wishes

Have you ever considered what you wish for the most? Because as you grow older (and somewhat wiser) it is not material things you wish for. You start longing for things you can’t actually grasp. Love, experiences, hope, time, positive thoughts and days filled with wonderful experiences

We begin to realise that we make wishes to be able to maintain our smiles and good mood for as long as possible. To be able to have time to share with the people with love as much as possible. To be able to relish each and every day to the fullest possible.

We make wishes not of things to have, but of emotions to feel and experiences to live.

And most of all, we wish that the days to come until the next wish will not take anything away from us. We wish for good health, love and happiness and for a life worth remembering.

It’s not things that make life worthwhile, it’s the people you devote it to and the way you spend your time. It’s how you feel, not what you have.

A different kind of crisis

Getting snowed in on a day when your to-do list is over-piling, that may be considered a crisis. Dripping donut jam on your clean shirt the minute you step out of the baker’s just two steps away from your office, that may too be considered a crisis. Losing money at a casino fun night, is well maybe not so much of a crisis (unless it is all your savings). We all face different crises in our lives and we all view them differently.

The third-world crisis of lacking food, clean water and a home is far more severe than the first-world crisis of not having matching shoes for a new outfit worth hundreds of dollars. It is all a matter of perspective. But perhaps, with just a couple of weeks before another year passes, we can take a second and rethink…everything.

The holiday season is one to rejoice, one to spread the love and show you care. But it is also one in which you are silently prodded to make amends, first and foremost with yourself.

The most intense period of crisis one can face is when this joyous season coincides with their birthday. That is when a crisis certainly hits. Because you begin to feel all the more intense about the fact of adding yet another year to those that have past, of becoming so many more years young (because you try and avoid the word “old”). You may finally believe the compliment that you are like wine, it only gets better with age. But deep down you do feel the melancholy strike, because there are very few people who achieve exactly what they want at the precise time in which they so desire. It is hard feeling incomplete. As though you are nowhere near where you’ve dreamt to be. And it is all the more difficult when you know that another birthday is rapidly approaching, signifying that time is still flying and there is nothing you can do.

Apart from one thing.

Continue to dream. Change what you can, and leave aside what you can’t. Rejoice in the warmth of the season and learn to appreciate the good of what you have. Maybe next year things will finally come your way. But, however it may be, you’ve already come a long way. You’re still standing and that it is the most important of it all.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Getting Seasonal