For me, the month of April is always special. Not only is April my birthday month, but ironically a majority of my friends also have April birthdays within a couple days of mine. In the past couple of weeks, I've been out to birthday dinners, consumed a questionable number of cupcakes, and I may or may not still have confetti on my kitchen counter because I've been too busy to clean it up. But lately, I've found myself getting caught up in the monotony of it all.
Don't get me wrong; I really do like the concept of birthdays. I'm the type of person that never fails to send a birthday text, write HBD on a Facebook wall, and make an Instagram post to help celebrate someone's special day. But behind the balloons and the birthday cake, I can't help but question why we don't treat people like it's their birthday everyday. And if I'm being honest, I feel like we're all kind of missing the whole point of birthdays in the first place.
When hypothesizing reasons for why we wait for 1 day out of 365 to go out of our way to make others feel special, my first thought was that our actions are rooted in the narcissistic society that we've created. In the age of the #selfie, we love to prioritize ourselves over others, whether we do so intentionally or unintentionally. And birthdays are a perfect example of just how much we as a society focus on our own lives.
Yes, birthdays are a great thing. The whole point of celebrating birthdays is to show someone how much you care for them and appreciate their existence. But why not make someone feel special and show them unconditional love everyday? Currently, our world is extremely divided and tensions are consistently high, but think of what would happen if we conducted our lives with the mindset of actively showing others the value that we see in them. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone considered what they could do for others before considering what they could do for themselves.
I don't want to be another person who wishes someone a meaningless, cookie cutter "happy birthday". I want to be the person that makes others feel wanted and special every single day. Because in my opinion, we shouldn't need to have an occasion in order to make someone smile and feel important.
