A lesson in gratitude

I hate my birthday.  Like, really hate it.  I don’t use the H-word lightly.  In fact, other than spiders, I can’t think of anything else that really sits in that category.

The whole birthday thing just makes me feel uncomfortable.  I don’t have parties or celebrations because I feel bad that people have to take time out of their own busy lives and feel pressured into buying me a present and spending their hard-earned cash.  It just makes me feel like a massive inconvenience to everyone.  So I avoid it.

Not to mention, the excruciating attention all on me when I picture having to blow the candles out.  Everyone’s eyes focussed on me, lights dimmed, candles blazing, delight on my friends’ faces hiding the fact that they’re actually thinking “hurry up and blow these bloody candles out so we can get home”.

What I’ve realised about both of these scenarios is that they’re just more examples of my mind telling me stories that either don’t exist or haven’t even occurred yet.  In real-life, the people that would I would choose to invite to celebrate with me would in fact want to come to a party with me because they care about me.  Moreover, they wouldn’t find it an inconvenience, they would find it a pleasure and watching me blow out candles on my cake would be something they would enjoy sharing with me.

All of this mind-trickery came to a thundering halt last year when I found out that on my birthday an old friend of mine passed away.  She and I flatted together in our early 20s but we lost touch in the following years.  She had a husband and two young children and breast cancer was the culprit.

And here I was internally moaning all day it was my birthday and trying to avoid any mention of it.  Turns out that I am the lucky one.  I’m healthy, alive, surrounded by my family with only my mind to trick me.  That’s why mindfulness is so powerful.  It puts things into perspective.

When you are able to identify the stories your mind tells you and the images it paints about events that haven’t even happened, you can shut those stories off and focus on the right here, right now.

Which is where the important stuff happens and which I am sure my late friend and her family would have given anything to have more of.

So, this year I am looking forward to my birthday.  I’m going to politely decline the old and tiring poor me discourse and instead choose a new narrative which will most probably include loads of carrot cake with cream cheese icing and a bunch of candles (not those bloody trick ones though!).