What's missing from birthdays?

A resolution to put a little bit more meaning into birthday wishes

Some good friends and I have spring birthdays, so naturally I’ve been thinking about birthdays. I’ve always rather liked mine; it’s generally a pleasant day, and of course it’s nice to have treats and to receive well-wishes from so many people (especially since social media can remind us about birthdays). It’s a warm reminder of how many good people there are in my life, and the joy of friendship and connection. I’m grateful.

At the same time, at the end of the day I often feel just a bit let down. My 14-year-old son noticed the same thing on his most recent birthday. I appreciate the well wishes, and the treats—I really do! If you know me in real life, I’m not complaining, just observing and analyzing—but I still feel vaguely unfulfilled. This year I think I’ve realized why. Treats and well wishes bring pleasure, which (let me emphasize) is not to be dismissed, but pleasure and meaning are not the same thing. I suspect it’s meaning that I’m missing, possibly because I’m getting older (also wiser?) and starting to prefer intangible things like that. Of course, it’s very possible that in my own case the problem lies with me: I’m not doing enough to read all the well-wishes and treats as meaningful in this way. Nevertheless, hear me out.

A related thought occurs in Act III of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. (Spoilers ahead, if you don’t know the play.) Emily has died and is about to be buried. She hasn’t fully settled into death yet and wants to revisit her life. Mrs. Gibbs advises her against it, and when Emily insists, Mrs. Gibbs advises her: “At least, choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day of your life. It will be important enough.”¹ She chooses her twelfth birthday.

As the inhabitants of the cemetery warned her, as Emily watches everyday life unfold, she realizes that nobody is really seeing one another, putting in the appreciative attention that goes with mindfulness. They’re going about their business, absorbed in it. It doesn’t take long for Emily to decide she wants to go back to her grave. She can’t stand the contrast between what her present self knows and what her twelve-year-old self and the rest of the people in the scene don’t.

It would take way too much to see one another all the time, every day, at the level Emily wishes for. There’s no way we could constantly be that attentive and mindful, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s enough to do it sometimes. That’s why it’s worth taking time out of our days for meditation, prayer, or gratitude.

Birthdays, however, do seem a like a particularly good time to really see one another. I think of a birthday as a sort of personal holiday where the tradition is that your people celebrate you.² An easy way to show someone that you appreciate them is to wish them well, hope they have lots of joy on the day and through the year, and so on—the things we generally do.

Photo by Jennie Brown on Unsplash

In this culture, of course, we also typically give gifts to our loved ones on their birthdays. Gifts are meant to express appreciation, and done well, they carry meaning as well as pleasure. But truly meaningful gift-giving is hard (at least for me), and it can be expensive. It’s easy to fall back on “treat” mode—and like I said, there’s nothing wrong with that. It makes a lot of sense, actually, because meaning is pleasurable in its own way, which makes it easy to slide from meaning-pleasure to treat-pleasure, especially when your loved ones know what treats you like. That’s a form of seeing in itself.

Still, there’s a reason why Aristotle dismissed the life of pleasure as the good life for a human being, despite taking care to recognize that the good life includes pleasure.³ He didn’t talk about meaning as such, but it’s not hard to argue that part of what constitutes eudaimonia—flourishing—is meaning.⁴ Friendship is a vital source of meaning, and it’s a crucial part of the good life according to Aristotle. It’s also a big part of what contributes to meaning in our own lives because good friendship includes seeing one another.

Coincidentally,

Nina Badzin

’s April friendship challenge was to make a point of acknowledging friends’ birthdays. My Dear Spouse and I put our friends’ birthdays in our joint calendar years ago, so we’ve got step 1 done. Given everything I’ve been thinking about, though, I’m going to try something new as a step 2. For the people I know well enough,⁵ once a year on someone’s birthday I’m going to try to take a minute to pay them a specific, meaningful compliment. I’ll choose a quality I prize about them or some small thing they did for me or with me and highlight it. It would demonstrate in a clear and direct way that I really see them, and not just that but how I value my connection to them. Join me?

1. Apparently I still have that line memorized after some 30 years. I looked it up just to make sure I had it right. It’s my favorite line, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

2. I’ve heard that in other cultures, it works the other way: you give gifts rather than receive them. But my point here might still hold even in that tradition.

3. I suspect that if pressed, he would have recognized a distinction between what I’ve been referring to as “treat” pleasure from the pleasures we get from meaning, from hard work, from connection with others, from nature, etc.

4. It’s probably anachronistic to connect meaning with Aristotle’s account of the good life, since (as I understand things) that concept wouldn’t have occurred to him. But I would argue that modern understandings of both meaning and eudaimonia would necessitate working the former into an account of the latter.

5. Which isn’t everybody to whom I’d wish happy birthday. Just like we don’t give everyone gifts, whether we pay them meaningful compliments will depend on the specific nature and closeness of the relationship.