Your first birthday isn’t really yours. 

It’s more of your family’s to celebrate while you have no clue what’s going on. Later, you realize this random day brings about your favorite cake and presents, not to mention the extra digit to your age. As you grow older, things are more in your control. You get to decide who to invite, what to do, and how to celebrate.

Eventually you wake up the next day…and realize nothing’s different. It’s not like you gained magic powers the second the clock struck midnight. With my own birthday on Tuesday, I started to wonder why so many people stop celebrating and what really sucked the fun out of it. 

Sure, attention, gifts, your favorite things and people are all excellent reasons to love your birthday, but maybe birthdays should be celebrated because they’re opportunities for you to feel proud of yourself. 

Think about it this way: Birthdays mark the year you’re turning, not the one you’ve finished. It’s like your very own New Year’s, a celebration and a new beginning. They shouldn’t be treated as checkpoints though; you shouldn’t feel like you must have achieved something by then. Like those New Year’s resolutions we rarely stick to, there’s always another year.

As the saying goes, age is just a number. All it does in this case is keep a tally of all the past versions of you. Just because it’s increasing doesn’t mean it’s something to hide or tease. 

And “celebrating” your birthday doesn’t have to mean hosting a huge party, it can be as simple as treating yourself to your favorite food or being on a call with the people who mean the most to you. Sometimes, giving your heart what it wants is the best birthday present you can give yourself.