Year 9 of a Pre-Birthday Tradition
Alright y’all, buckle up. It’s July 19th and that means it’s time for a massive post, prefaced the same way every year.
It’s the day before my birthday and for the last nine years I’ve had a birthday tradition for myself. On July 19th I ask everyone to consider diverting the happy birthday messages that I will start to receive at 12:01am on July 20th, and send a nice message to someone else who might need a pick me up instead.
TLDR, skip to the end. The middle part is just ego strokes.
Every year I re-read the previous July 19 posts and reflect on what has changed. Reading them now a pattern is so clear to me that I never would have noticed before. Starting from when my parents died in 2016 and 2017 I was broken. I was not okay. But the crux of each of these posts was a philosophical question:
If watching my parents die has fundamentally and forever changed me, then would they still recognize me if they could see me today? Has their passing altered me in such a way that they wouldn’t know me?
Even typing it now is a hard question because as I sit here, and look around the apartment that I own, that I bought with my wife, having just enrolled in pet insurance for the puppy that we have just adopted (more on him later), it’s hard for me to see someone that they knew.
But what are we supposed to do? Stop?
That’s what I want to say to me, each year starting in 2016 until 2021 when I can see the gears beginning to grind again. The curse of losing someone earlier than anyone would hope, is that their memory locks the day they can no longer grow and change. But for us, we continue onwards. We will have new experiences every day, and theirs will fall further and further away into the past.
And that’s okay. That’s how life works.
From 2016 until 2021 these posts are asking forgiveness from you all, as proxies for my parents who I can no longer ask, for changing. For growing. For exploring new things. For having new experiences. What I couldn’t articulate then was that it felt like a betrayal to experience something I couldn’t talk to them about.
Today is July 19, 2023. This tradition started as a request because I was happy and fulfilled and was hoping to bring some smiles into the world. How quickly my world changed and I ended up at the bottom of some pretty dark places. This tradition became a lifeline back to a version of me I could aspire to be again. Today, this tradition has become a way of marking time. A balm to my heart so that even when I can’t see it on a day-by-day basis, it’s clear that the world changes and so do we. Nothing is terrible forever, and happiness is a pursuit. The trick is finding the pursuits that make you happy.
Because I don’t need to aspire towards the version of Ned who was 25. I get to aspire towards the version of Ned none of us have met yet, and be excited for the paths that will lead me to him someday. Those paths will be small, imperceptible choices that all add up to July 19, 2024. And when we get there, I’m excited to see what patterns have emerged I wasn’t ready to see yet today.
What’s different this year is that I’m not sad about the past, or excited about the future, I’m excited for the steps I’ll get to take tomorrow. I haven’t been wholly present in my future in a long time, and it feels really good to be back.
If I could talk to 25 year old Ned and say anything to him? I’d say “stop trying to guess where you’ll be 6 months from now. You’re wrong and you’ll only make tomorrow worse. Where you are 9 years from now is better than you can possibly imagine. And it takes a laundry list of shit to end up there. Both the good and the bad matter, but they only matter if you’re present for them, so stop looking at what they add up to, and find out when it gets here.”
“Oh, and do less shots. Your body will thank you later.”
If I have any hopes for what I’ll write next year? It’s that the result is full of things that I could never predict today.
The first thing? Next Tuesday Jenni and I are welcoming Monroe (forever name still to be determined) into our home. A 14 week old German Shepherd / Lab mix who we met yesterday and is just the best pup possible. I can’t wait to introduce him to you all next week :).
See? And that just happened today. Already ending my year with something I never would have predicted a year ago.
And so with that I ask you all to continue my experiment for another year.
If tomorrow you send me a birthday message, trust me, I’ll read it, and love it. But take a second and consider instead posting something to someone else’s wall, or sending them a message, who might just benefit from it even more, who might need a reminder that the world loves them and that they are valuable.
If on July 20th, our world is filled with a few more smiles, a little less self hatred, a lot more love, and a little less animosity, that’s the best birthday gift I can ask for.
I love you all.
~Ned
