I have always loved my birthday. What’s not to love? As a Halloween baby, I spent my birthdays opening presents (oooh), dressing up in costumes (yeah!) eating pumpkin-shaped birthday cakes and, as if that wasn’t enough fun, heading out for massive candy donations from every door I could get to.
Really, as a kid AND the Queen of the Sweet Tooth, what could be better?
Fortunately, as I so intently live the motto “You’re only young once, but can be immature indefinitely” not a lot has changed.
I still get presents and eat more than my fill of birthday cake. And, while I don’t dress up any differently than whatever I scratch together any other day, I still get plenty of candy. Some by overbuying for the anticipated trick-or-treaters, and some given to me by friends and family who know that the way to my heart is through a bag of Baby Ruths, or Butterfingers, or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or M&M’s or… well, you get the idea.
But this year I got something more. On top of cakes and the candy and the presents. This year I got a gianormous virtual hug from my facebook friends. And it was spectacular.
In years past, I’ve gotten cards, phone calls, visits and email flooding me with appreciation for the people who color my life and make it so satisfying. But this year, the first as a member of the ever-expanding facebook community, I logged on birthday morning to find my page covered with wishes, greetings, virtual gifts and even a link to the singing Corgis on YouTube.
Of course, facebook makes it so easy to know who’s birthday is coming up (look, the list is over there in the right column) and all you have to do, really, is click and type and you’ve met the birthday obligation. But that doesn’t minimize the impact of a page covered with Birthday messages. And in spite of the ease and seemingly mindless act of sending off a greeting, I’m learning that sending feels almost as good as being on the receiving page.
Assuming that most of your ‘friends’ are actually people that you know in one way or another, in taking the moment to construct the message, you’re focusing on them, who they are and their place in your life. And in that moment of connection and recollection, you also experience a wave of gratitude and that warm, fuzzy feeling triggered by a memory with meaning. So as you’re typing “Happy Birthday”, it is less of a pat greeting than of a wish from your heart.
That’s what it’s like for me. I’m grateful that facebook gives me that little nudge to take a minute to reconnect and share a tiny slice of that emotion. And as I read through the birthday greetings posted by my facebook friends, I see them as more than a couple of keystrokes triggered by a computer reminder. I feel them as a virtual hug transmitted not so much via broadband but through our emotional connection.
So to all my facebook friends, thank you. And you should know that you got your wish. Your posts, and a bag of Baby Ruths, made it a very happy birthday.
Now if I could just figure out how to share all this leftover candy...
