Thoughts on… birthdays

Every day is someone else’s birthday. Someone somewhere is celebrating their birthday.

Is there a difference in birthdays between the first and third-world countries?

What is a birthday?

Birthdays to me are occasions to remember your age and to celebrate how many years you have been on earth. I usually don’t make such a big deal out of it. For my 21^st birthday, important and significant to so many, I remember having only dinner and drinks with two of my friends after work. Nothing fancy, just some random bar in town. Before my 21^st birthday, I only celebrated my birthdays at home, blowing the candles to a cake shared between two other siblings and my father. That is because the four of our birthdays are close to each other. It falls between the end of June and the beginning of July (a span of exactly two weeks). I remember we usually fight over what cake to get because our tastes are quite varied.

Anyway, birthdays are not very important to me because I sincerely believe that age is just a number. No I am not trying to bluff myself or anything ridiculous like that. I am older than the people I usually hang out with but somehow I always felt younger, like mentally. I don’t feel as mature as my age tells me to be and I definitely look younger than my age (no need to argue over this point because it’s proven on my recent trip to Macau). Also, to me, birthdays are not worth the large over-the-top celebrations. A simple dinner affair with great company and good laughs will suffice. I really don’t splurge much on my birthday, except for that one time that I decided to go clubbing for my birthday and we bought a bottle. My first bottle ever.

But what do birthdays mean to people who were born in third-world countries?

Now, based on general knowledge, we all know that the mortality rate of third-world countries is higher. People die young and most do not live till old age (old age = about fifty to sixty years old). Death is a very real thing, an ever-present threat to everyone. So when faced with such an ominous reminder, birthdays seemed such a trivial occasion, yet are so much more significant in meaning. It seemed frivolous to spend so much time and money planning a birthday when you are living from hand to mouth, when food is scarce and families could barely scrape by with what little they have. I don’t speak for them, because really, I have no way of knowing for real, but I do believe that they value birthdays as much as we do, just in a different way. To them, a birthday signifies another year of survival. It is something to be thankful about. I don’t suppose they go all “hurrah” about it, but celebrate it in their own way.

I would imagine (keyword here is imagine) that mother would cook dinner with a little something extra special, maybe a favourite dish of the birthday person. Father would come home earlier from work and the whole family would sit down to a nice quiet dinner together, reflecting on the year before and the year ahead, feeling thankful for the simple blessing of being alive. Then at the end of the dinner father would present a little something to the birthday person. It is a simple item, nothing fancy, and the birthday person will cherish it and love it to bits and keep it forever. Mother would look at the birthday person straight in the eye, hands clamped on said person’s shoulders, mouth moving to the words of a prayer or blessing before giving the birthday person a warm loving hug. If there are siblings, they will present birthday person with little gifts of their own. It may not be bought with money, but plucked from nature, or picked and dusted and refurbished, but filled with affection and love. The birthday person will thank each and every one of them personally, heart happy and filled, and troop off to bed.

Some of us remember our existence through our birthdays, no matter how we choose to celebrate them. Some do not want to remember their existence at all; hence do not celebrate their birthdays. Our age may mean nothing to some of us, but it may mean the world to others. No matter what we think about birthdays, we should just value life and our existence and make full use of it. Like they always say…

YOLO!