Birthdays!

What makes a birthday so special?  Is it the colorful floating balloons, moist delicious cake or even tightly packed presents?  Or is it the loving friends and family that surround you?  Along with all the previous reasons, I believe we celebrate birthdays also because “Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new.”

As in during New Year’s Day or even Easter and Christmas, our birthday is when most people decide a goal they want to fulfill.  Usually that goal may be to have good grades, lose weight, and improve oneself.  I mean really, how many times have we chosen one of these resolutions or one similar to these at one point in our lives?  We gain a newfound motivation and push to try to better ourselves, and this motivation can carry us far in life if we keep it up. 

We realize exactly how many people care about us, how many people have believed in us and how many people have and will support us throughout our lives no matter what.  This may be proven by physical presents and gifts or simply by a short call and warm smiles.  Our birthday is when we feel loved and reminisce about our lives and how we have changed and what we have learned.  We remember our birth home, our hometown, our family both in front of us and a great distance away who both love us exactly the same and our friends who have been there in thick and thin.

 Our birthday is a day all about us.  There are seldom days where we can have a day to do what we want and decide what we want or would like to do-of course in a reasonable amount.  We wouldn’t want to be delusional and demand what we know is not possible, but we can have ice cream for lunch, sleep in, watch what we want to on TV and everyone is especially nicer to us.  We can demand a day to ourselves where we can turn off all electronic devices and simple relax alone, or we can have a gigantic superfluous party.

 So much is intertwined in our birthday that we do not realize.  We discover all that we have in our lives and how blessed and lucky we are, and we can create a new self that we can to be for the rest of our lives. 

We're Original! ... or So We Think?

Edward Young once pondered, “We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?”  How ironic is it that American society, the country that treasures and gloats about its diversity and how open it is to being unique and creative, tries to stamp out all “abnormalities” in our population?  Of course this is not just in America, this is all over the world; in fact, America truly is one of the most accepting countries in the world.  Society tries to fit its youth into a certain cookie cutter image which is why children and teenagers and people in their early-20s are generally seen as rowdy and unkempt.  Since we learned our ABCs when we were around 5, we have slowly been assimilating into society and our image of who we should be.
Being open to being unique can benefit society.  The United States have somewhat addressed, although not fully accepted this fact.  How many parents told their children “Don’t you want to be the president?” generally with a false smile?  Of course they realize not every child can or will be the president, so our society aims our children to become lawyers, doctors or CEOs.  Recently in the last century, universities and colleges have expanded their majors and minors to majors such as film, design, although they have expanded their major lists so much it is almost unreasonable to find a job, such as ethnic studies.
One may ask, “But we have the chance to become individuals, how is it possible that we all become similar?”  Well, by this time that we have the opportunity to “become individuals” we have had these walls of expectations and standards that block us from truly wandering from our imprinted selves.  How can we destroy the self we have known and were expected to be for at least the last 15 years? Unless we were fortunate to have open parents, we have been trapped into this box labeled “Who to Be” and only the ones who revolt under the rule of parents have a chance to break away from the cage.  This break causes a rift and tension between the parent(s) and offspring until there is a mutual understanding or agreement which may not occur.  In short, trying to become an individual can be detrimental for at least a short period of time. 
So how can we become unique individuals?  We have to fight to create our own path.