You Say It's Your Birthday?

After All My Plans, they Melt into the Sand

I made another trip around the sun a few weeks ago (actually, it was a month ago by now).  Staying in form with the other "monumental" days that have already passed this year in our house; our wedding anniversary, Valentine's Day, etc., it was pretty low key.  It landed on a Thursday, which you may be aware is a "dance night" in our house this year.  It also happened to be "dance picture night", which added some extra chaos and required additional adult supervision throughout the evening.

Thus, my "birthday dinner" was self made* and enjoyed in the company of our Colombian teaching intern who is staying with us this year.  Two of our three kids where around, but they were relatively oblivious to the significance of the day, and had zero interest sitting at the table to watch us eat as they had already consumed their "fast food"^.  I at least made myself a steak (which is ironic because I'm not a huge steak-eater) and enjoyed a glass of red wine.

Growing up I always eagerly looked forward to my birthday.  I would usually have a hard time sleeping the night before, eagerly awaiting what gifts might be given that following morning in celebration of my birth.  I vividly remember a birthday growing up, maybe when I was 10 or so (okay, maybe not so vivid), when my whole family seemed to forget it was my birthday.  I remember being so upset, until they eventually surprised me with tickets to a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball game that evening.  I still look forward to my birthday.  As much as I would like to say it is just another day on the calendar, it certainly feels nice to be well wished and maybe pampered a little, even if just for a day.  Everyone deserves that on occasion.  Even you.

As we get older, we may naturally look at our birthdays with a certain amount of dread.  Recognizing that we are getting older, possibly at our nearing another milestone of old age, and that much closer to kicking the bucket.  Officially reaching the backside of my 30s, it is a salient concept for me.  The gray hairs are prominent, while the total amount of hair is thinning (on my head at least).  My body aches more, in more places, for inexplicable reasons.  Those facts of life don't always make us keen to want to celebrate.  

Something I really seemed to grasp (appreciate/accept) this year though, was the fact that my birthday isn't really about me anymore.  It's about taking stock of the existing presents in my life; my family and my friends, my health, my stunning good looks.  These are the things that make me look forward to having a birthday and celebrating another year of life.  It's certainly cliche to say, but the best gift I can receive on my birthday is the opportunity to continue to be apart of the lives of the people I love, especially my wife and kids.

For that gift to keep on giving year after year, I think you have to recognize that the giving of your love to the people you love returns love to you in greater quantities.  Most all of us feel good when we've done something nice for someone else.  I know I do.  For me, it is just easier to be kind of people, but it also makes me feel better when I'm kind.  And, I like to feel good.  Given that we've just celebrated Easter, if you follow Christian teachings, it doesn't seem coincidental that Jesus was both the happiest and most self sacrificing individual.  I'm guessing the same holds true for the major prophets/players in the other main religions.  

And this giving of ourselves to others, especially those who mean a lot to us, might actually helps ensure that we will have numerous birthdays to celebrate in the future.  Coincidentally,  I just finished reading the book, Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Dr. Harry Lodge.  While it focuses primarily on the things you need to do from a health and fitness standpoint to live a good long, and active life, the final chapters are dedicated to a person's emotional well being.  The authors, particularly the one with a medical degree, stress of the importance, especially in old age, of mattering to others.  Having connection and commitment to things beyond our own self interest strengthens our limbic brain, which typically corresponds with a longer span of life.  

A few years ago, a good friend and I sat a bar and questioned the reason why, as we aged, we had started to seemingly sabotage our own happiness by adding responsibilities to our lives like spouses, kids, houses, jobs, etc. (I had all four of these, he only had a job).  We observed that these things had a tendency to get in the way of what we typically lived in pursuit of during our younger years; namely, sex, drugs and rock and roll.  But as I exchanged emails with this same friend a few months, congratulating him on joining the Jerome Bettis club, he expressed his contentment with accepting the fact that we were no longer rockstars, and likely never were in the first place.

We get to that point in our lives, particularly when we become spouses and parents, when we realize that it's not all about us.  At least not all the time.  We see things in the broader context of our place as it relates the to world around us and particularly in relation to those who are closest to us.  We see how we can play a role in their happiness, even if that means sacrificing our own happiness from time to time.  I believe this is what the kids these days call "adulting".  When I had lunch with my Mom for her birthday a few weeks after my own, I shared with her that I now "got it".  I understood why she, and my Dad, were so quick to make things about my sister and I and not them, even their own birthdays.

So on my birthday, my family gave me the gift of being able to play a role in contributing to our collective familial happiness.  Which, on this specific birthday, meant staying out of the way.  It felt good to not add an unnecessary stress to and already stressful day by insisting that things be centered around me.  My family might have felt a little bad, or maybe just my wife, that my birthday seemed to go overlooked, but it was a perfect way to celebrate.  And my body, particularly my liver, felt incredibly better the following day.

Given the trajectory of our lives, the chance of my birthday next year being just as exciting as this year is pretty high.  Although, it is on a Saturday next year which might be on a dance competition weekend - then it might get really crazy.  But the chances of me having another birthday next year are pretty high (statistically speaking at least).  If celebrating my birthday every year means making the celebration more about others and less about me in order to ensure that I will have numerous birthdays to come, it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.  There will likely come a day again, when my birthday becomes all about me, even though I'd rather have it not be.  By that time, I'll be so old and senile I probably won't even remember that it actually is my birthday.

I'm pretty certain this was my birthday last year.

  

        

*When my wife mentioned to our 8 year old that she felt bad that I had to make my own birthday dinner, her response was; "But Mom, he likes making dinner."

^We don't eat a lot of traditional fast food in our house - McDonald's, etc.  We do eat on the run a lot though, and a friend once told me they refer to those meals in the vehicle consumed en route to something as "fast food".  I liked the term, so naturally hijacked it.