Hurray for birthdays. For some reason this birthday felt different than the past couple of years. I didn’t shout it out to everyone, reminding them that this event was coming, nor did I try and hide it from view, I just had it on Facebook like most people, & let it be.
But this odd thing happened, and I’m not sure if it’s part of a culture that I’ve been trying to build, or what exactly it was, but I got a bunch of personal “private” messages (either via SMS or bookface) from a random assortment of fokes. It was really quite nice.
I’m all for the public wall Facebook thing, but after an accidential social experiment amoung friends a few years back, I lost faith in the bookface system. What was the experiment? Person A was changing person B’s birthday to a different random date. No biggie, but the date rolled around and a bunch of people wished Person B Happy Birthday (since Facebook never lies). Then for fun, they moved the date forward another month. A month later a bunch more comments for Happy Birthday pile in, the worst part, a bunch of people had double posted, not realising that Person B surposily had a birthday a month prior.
Anyway I had a number of birthday wishes away from the public wall. Which means someone had to go to the effort to write and then send that message. Since practically ditching the Facebook timeline 18 months ago, I’ve been trying to actively follow up birthdays using my phones calendar. Unfortunately sometimes I miss. But where possible on the day I send a message. I’m not trying to be different, or anything. Just trying to be genuine in the digital world.
One such friend wrote the following (which is probably why they are the published author, and I’m a hack at the English language with a blog):
[I] Hope you catch a glimpse of how loved you are brother
And you know what, I reckon I did. It wasn’t about amazing presents & big parties. Instead it was about connecting with others, some for the first time in months, others we only spoke yesterday.
From time to time, may we all feel how loved we are by those around us.