I celebrated my birthday this week. It was another anniversary of my 18thbirthday.
I have never had a hard time acknowledging that I am getting older, but I also don’t really celebrate it. Working with a lot of adolescent and young adult clients has gotten me used to my age bracket being referred to as “old like my parents.” Ouch.
I do not feel old emotionally. In my mind, I haven’t changed since my teen years. I actually feel very balanced in both holding on to my youth and enjoying some maturation. That feeling is strengthened by a memory of my own father looking at me when I was a high school senior and saying he was still waiting to feel like a grown up. His point was punctuated by the fact that he was unscrewing an Oreo cookie while we talked!
At the same time, I do get very nostalgic at the idea of time marching on. Birthdays don’t make me feel old, but they do remind me how quickly time is passing. Whether I like it or not. I feel like this on my own birthday and I feel this way on my family’s birthdays.
Over the years, I have really fluctuated as to whether I think birthdays are a “big deal.” There is no doubt I think my kids’ birthdays, and any child’s birthday, is a bigger deal than an adult’s. I am not really sure why other than the idea that so much changes between birthdays when you are younger. My own kids often comment that I take the day off from work for their birthdays but not for my own.
My ambivalence is likely a result of two issues.
First, as DBT teaches, opposing points of view can both be true. It’s not that birthdays are or are not a big deal. To me, they are both.
The important part to me is that we all have a need to feel like we matter to people and that our lives are reason to celebrate. That is a big deal.
What’s not a big deal to me is how people express this to us, or whether the expression coincides with a particular day on the calendar. It is not about the quantity of people who acknowledge me or the quantity of gifts. It is most definitely not about the quantity of money spent!
The big deal is the quality of validation experienced. As much as I would like to believe we do not need others to validate us, I simply don’t believe that is true. We do need validation from those important to us.
This need brings me to the second issue underlying my ambivalence. Though I strongly believe we all need validation, it is a need I have a hard time acknowledging. Birthdays feel like a lot of pressure to receive that validation! The part of me that believes birthdays are not a big deal also has a hard time acknowledging that my own need for validation is a big deal.
This year, the fact that I turned a year older was not a big deal. The fact that we couldn’t go out to dinner was also not a big deal. The big deal was that I felt loved and like a priority even during a pandemic. The big deal is how truly grateful I am for that gift.
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