You probably didn’t. But about 814,000 other people in the United States celebrated a special day with me. On another day you will celebrate a special day too, because each one of us has our own special holiday. It’s a day that is set aside once a year to celebrate your own personal trip around the sun. Your birthday. It’s the day of your beginning; the moment you arrived.
It is the custom to bestow birthday wishes on the celebrant. We wish others a “happy” birthday. Maybe despite conflicting evidence, we all want each other to experience happiness. And we make an effort to tell them so. Facebook makes it easy to reach out. At least on this one day. I appreciate all the happy. Every wish feels good. Others treat us differently on our birthday. There may be gifts and outings. People sing a special song to us. We get birthday hugs and kisses, cards and flowers. Maybe we make a wish and blow out the candles on our birthday cake. We receive outward expressions of love. Often we treat ourselves differently too. You may give yourself permission to splurge on something you want. You may challenge yourself to do something dramatic like skydiving or some other death-defying act. You may gather your loved ones around you. Or you may allow yourself to let go of your responsibilities for just one day…because it’s your birthday.
So what is this special holiday and what does it mean to you? You have your own personal perception of how to celebrate your birthday. Certain birthdays are considered milestones. When you reach 21 years of age, you are considered to legally be an adult. At 16, you can drive a car. At 65, you can enroll in Medicare and consider yourself to be a senior citizen. A birthday is nothing more than a measurement of time, but the number can have different perceptions and meaning. If you’re unemployed and living in your parent’s basement, perhaps you’re not celebrating your success at 35 in the same way as if you had reached that age when you were established in your career. Birthdays can give us an opportunity to compare ourselves with others and then rate ourselves accordingly. This is never a good idea. You are where you are in your life because of the choices you have made. If you’re not happy with the comparison, accept your choices and then decide to make better ones. Remember a birthday is merely a record of how many times you have circled the sun. When you make different choices along your journey, you end up in a different place from where you began.
Birthday experiences and celebrations change as we age. Our parents may make a big deal out of our first birthday but we don’t even remember it. At about 4 or 5, we start to remember the birthday parties and look forward to gifts and special outings. We count our age as 4, going on 5. Or we say we are 4 and a half. Counting makes us feel bigger and smarter. Until it doesn’t. At a certain point as the numbers increase, some of us don’t even want to acknowledge our birthday any more. Counting can make us feel used up or worn out or “over the hill”. We evaluate where we’ve been and where we are going, according to what we believe to be true.
Our birthdays are part of our own unique lifescript. This is a belief system about the way things are and about who you are. Your lifescript began at birth. Your parents began to define you. They gave you a name. They offered a way of life. You were given information about your economic status in the world…about money….how to earn it…how to spend it…how much you could have…what you were worth. You were given information about your gender. They told you how to be a boy or a girl…about sex…love and power. Your lifescript was written before you were born by your culture, ethnicity, place of origin. You were given limits. You were told how to be and you made choices based on the beliefs about what you were told. And it all began on the day you were born.
On the anniversary of your birth…your special holiday…give your self permission to be re-born into a life where you decide how to be. Re-write your lifescript to support your wishes and dreams. And may this birth day be happy.