My sister likes to make fun of me because on my birthday, my favourite line to use is "It's my birthday" as an end-all-be-all. And why shouldn't it be? Birthdays are the one day of the year that allow us to throw parties and get presents for no reason of our own merit.
Throughout high school I used to love planning something to do with friends - go out for dinner, have cake, go skating, or something. But for the past several years, University exams would keep me in Waterloo until the days leading up to Christmas, and then my family and another family of our close friends would go to the States for Boxing Day shopping. As a result, I have spent my last several birthdays out of the country. My dad's friend, whose family we shopped with on these trips, also has a December birthday. But his is right
on Christmas. Both our families would go out for a nice dinner together for Christmas, and at the end, we would get him a cake and sing happy birthday. Then my parents would bring the cake over to me and tell me to take a picture with it so it's like we're celebrating my birthday too. They did this every year, and somehow never stopped thinking it was funny. And every year I would get really embarrassed, because my parents were making a scene in a nice restaurant, and annoyed, because it wasn't my birthday yet and I wanted my own cake.
This year, there was no shopping trip for my family because my parents were out of town. My sister and I were faced with having our own quiet dinner at home, but at the last minute, were invited to join these aforementioned family friends at their house for Christmas dinner. My sister and I were more than glad to oblige.
And the food that night was amazing and abundant. The house was teeming with people, relatives of our friends that I'd never met. I realized I kind of missed traditional Christmases like this. And at the end, there was cake - two, in fact, for Uncle Stan. We sang happy birthday - twice, also - once in English and once in Chinese.
And as I stood there watching - taking in his beaming face as he hugged his family and cut the cake - I realized that in all the years that we celebrated together in the States, I was never able to stop thinking about myself for a second. I was annoyed at having to share my birthday hurrah with him, or that his birthday overshadowed mine, or something, I don't know, whereas it was his birthday that was getting shafted. Maybe he didn't even care, but all I know is that I had not had a moment like that in a long time, where the fog lifts and you are left with nothing but to face your own selfishness.
Anyway I still love birthdays, and I did celebrate mine a couple of days after with friends. It's always a wonderful feeling to be with the people you love, and who love you, regardless of who was born on what day.
The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me.
I hear addicts talk about the shakes and panic attacks and the highs and lows of resisting their habit, and to some degree I understand them because I have had habits of my own, but no drug is so powerful as the drug of self. No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction.
-Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz
