Happy, Happy, Birthday

Last Friday was my birthday. As we know, the older we get the less we like to see the next birthday coming. There are generally those people in your life who like to remind you of the event and depending on the age you are turning, give you some pretty good ribbing about the time spent on earth. You gotta love those folks who exist in your life to simply remind you of the things you might not want to think about - especially on your special day.

Over the past several years birthday wishes have changed for anyone who has joined the world of social networking, i.e. Facebook. As those of us engaged in the friendly environment know, when your birthday rolls around, your wall becomes inundated with birthday well wishes from all sorts of folks.

This year, as the years before this, my wall was once again filled with "Happy Birthday" after "Happy Birthday" [I learned a long time ago to disable the email notifications linked to Facebook].

Here's the thing though. Over the past year I have been less than concerned with hitting the birthdays of my FB Friends. Sure, I hit the ones that I am in general contact with anyway and some who I have very little other contact. There were even a few in there to whom I haven't spoken with in years. Other than that, not so much.

Mostly I just don't make it a priority to take the time each day to check the birthdays. I can't really claim innocent neglect for being away from my computer on some days because like so many others, I mostly access from a mobile device anyway. For the most part, I have been thinking that it doesn't matter because so many others are doing the well wishing anyway.

Friday made me think about it again. as I scrolled through the list of people wishing me a happy FB birthday I felt so... well, special. It meant something to me that people took a moment to make a post even if just a simple "Happy B-day" and nothing more. I looked over the names and realized there was no category of FB friend that wasn't covered. From close family to devoted friends. From neighbors to old high school acquaintances. From old coworkers to teachers. Many of the posts did not surprise me, but some did.

Then there is the factor of FB friends that are just that - FB friends. these are the people we reconnect with briefly on FB from a long time ago, but after some shallow chat and reconnection they are just another name on the list of mutual friends that someone else sees realizing what a small word it really is; several of those even posted. For that matter, last year my old middle school bully even wished me happy birthday. How ironic is it that he is on my FB friends list? It's probably a good thing I healed on the inside and took him off that other list I used to keep.

As I thought more about it [probably too long in my more sentimental old age] I realized that I was genuinely appreciative of each one regardless of the relationship. Throughout the day I kept hearing the tone of mobile alerts from my phone indicating once again a person on the other end of a computer or phone who took a moment to wish me happy birthday. All day long I had a constant reinforcement of love and thoughtfulness.

In light of my new found sentiment I have decided to do two things. First I am going to reply by "comment" to each of the individual posts with a thank you. I know I could do the quick and easy status update approach with a general thank you to all [by no means am I criticizing that] but I'd rather extend the individual response and make myself take the time to do so. And second, I plan to be far more observant of the birthdays that pop up in the events and send personal well wishes when they do. I know how I felt when they came up on my wall. I'm going to pay it forward... even to my middle school bully whenever his birthday rolls around.