Celebrating the day you were born | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Celebrating the day you were born | Previous Challenge Entry
By Tesiri Moweta
05/24/05
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Birthdays are special days. They are meant to celebrated and worthy to be celebrated. I have come to find out though that different people have different ways of celebrating their birthdays. Well, that is if they know their birthdays. Is that possible? It sure is. I have met a couple of people that don’t know their birthdays for reasons they see as obvious. No one was able to tell them. You know what such people do? They just pick a day and claim it as theirs. Strange but true. One of them said to me, a man advanced in age “what’s your own proof that you were born on the 30th of October as you keep telling everyone? What if you found out it was all a fluke and the records were wrong, what would you do? Would you not settle for another day and choose it as your birthday?” I looked at him almost angry and said “I was born on the 30th of October whether you like it or not, that’s my birthday!” I said and stormed off. I didn’t want the date to change so I didn’t want to think of it changing. Like almost all of us.

There are also people I have met who year in year out forget their birthdays. This one really gets to me. I call to say happy birthday and I hear “Oh, do you know I forgot?”“Happy birthday anyway” I tell them and drop the set. Birthdays don’t just mean anything to them because life is too full of more important things than birthdays for them.

But there are also those I have met who don’t joke with their birthdays at all and the only way they can show their seriousness for their birthdays is by throwing a big party every year (well, more like because they can afford it). Not that it gives them a deep significance for being alive, but it gives them an opportunity to show a new house, a spectacular costume made outfit and generally the vanity of life.

Another surprising set is the ones that don’t believe that birthdays should be celebrated.According to them, birthdays bring bad memories like John the Baptist having his head off on Herodias' daughter’s birthday. This is something I have never understood and probably would never. How could someone’s bad way of life inspire another to forget that there’s a good way of life altogether?

All in all, take it or leave it, birthdays are beautiful. Have you ever seen a woman giving birth or bringing forth a child to this world? If you have, you’ll agree with me that life is beautiful and God is wonderful! You’ll appreciate each birthday anniversary that you have the opportunity of seeing and remembering.

In my years on earth, I have seen different people celebrate their birthdays in different ways but of all of them, two strike me as the most profound so far. The first was my twenty-first birthday some years back. Most of my friends had nice bashes, great gatherings and received precious presents. Not too surprising, twenty-one was a land mark and it ought to recognizably celebrated. However, as mine drew near, the lord said to me over and over again “I don’t want you to celebrate like the others did, I want you to take the amount it would have cost to celebrate your birthday to that orphanage you pass almost everyday when you’re going out.” I did and it was the most amazing experience.I had never entered an orphanage before especially on my birthday but I did that day and saw those little children. I thought to myself, “why would anyone celebrate without remembering these ones?”

The second was on the Lord’s birthday, it was Christmas for the year two thousand and four and as much as I had activities lined up for the day, I got a call that my help was needed for a street kids Christmas party. Every other thing had to wait and I gave all that I could to helping with the children’s sumptuous meal. It was a fulfilling and satisfying experience for me.

Regardless therefore of how people see and celebrate that day called a birthday, I see birthdays as days we should say “thank you Lord for letting me live” and show that “thank you” by giving something to enrich another person’s life.Afterall, for you to be able to celebrate, your own life must have been enriched and there's nothing wrong with extending that enrichment to someone else.

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