Birthdays

Birthday is that day of the year when everything is miraculously amazing: the boring school day, the tiring work at job and even the almost stranger like acquaintance. Everything and everybody is welcome and you are brimming with so much joy that all you want to do is share it with the world! The teacher doesn’t scold you, cos it’s your birthday. Your friends are super nice. And for the older kids, it’s time for birthday bumps and party! Birthdays, are fantastic.

But hold on. Isn’t it also that time of the year when you find out who truly cares about you to remember a day that is special to you though it is extremely ordinary for them? Yes, it is the day for secret character assassination (it’s a secret you shall never divulge) of everybody who did not wish you. Your only aunt, that old friend, nobody is spared. Birthdays, are important.

Everyone who doesn’t have a great online presence and is specially particular to change the settings on each social media platform to hide their birthday, will surely have that special set of people who they consider so close to them that they have immense faith in their recalling ability that they are thoroughly sure that a reminder from an algorithm is unnecessary for those people to make their birthday special. It is only when this special set has an amnesia attack on the day of your birth, do things start going downhill.

Why are birthdays so important? We turn a year older, we aren’t any wiser. We sit in anticipation of gifts, go on shopping sprees, and leave no stone unturned on making ourselves feel like royalty; all for that one day. Why? The answer is simple. Birthdays are special, for we have been trained to believe so. Sure, it was a happy occasion the day we were born. It must have been for our parents and family. The remembrance of the joy is worth celebrating. But it is wrong to expect every person we encounter to feel the happiness with the same enthusiasm.

The centre of every person’s life is their own self. Every other person is just that, “an other person”. So it is wrong of us to expect that everybody we care enough about to remember their birthday will remember ours. Birthdays and wishes must be heartfelt. It isn’t true when written on a wall by a person who hasn’t spoken to you since high school. Nor is it true that a person who doesn’t wish you on your birthday doesn’t love you. Your birthday happened to be at a lower priority on their to-do list for the day and somehow got conveniently erased from it.

For everyone who has ever had a birthday, stop fretting about (and caring about) those who didn’t wish you: go have a blast, love your life and self! Happy birthday!