Birthdays.  Lots of fun (?) as we get older.  Even our friends aren’t too thrilled when our day comes around.

Everyone’s busy.  Everyone’s broke.  Everyone’s scared to consider they also are aging.

But we celebrate them.  Or at least, we stop and consider them. Even though as we age, the age we are “sounds” different than it did when we were much younger.  Remember how old you thought your 45-year-old art teacher was?  How over-the-hill the bus driver was?  How you’d never look as “bad” as that gray-haired woman who lived down the street with all the cats?

50?  Yeech, that’s when you stop staying up late at night.  60?  You probably won’t leave the house then.  70?  Teeth in a jar.

And then we turn these ages…and realize how untrue all that is, how we had no clue when we were young that we were infants compared to what life is all about.  The experiences we have, the wisdom we gain, the pain we live through…it all makes us who we are right now. 

And that includes those wrinkles.  And extra inches around our waistline.  Nature is going to do what nature is going to do.  We don’t have to completely give up, we can get off the couch and go to the gym, walk 10,000+ steps a day or do some chair aerobics, and have an apple instead of a snack cake.

And we can celebrate right now, in this moment, being alive and not being a kid anymore. How great it is to no longer worry what everyone thinks about us all the time.  Not letting fear rule every decision we make.  Not putting important things off because we think we’ll live forever. Not thinking every disappointment or failure has doomed us for eternity.

In fact, it’s those disappointments and failures that give the cake of life its flavor.  You might not taste it at first, you might have to wait quite a while, but you’ll eventually detect the spices that make up your unique recipe:  the heartbreaks, getting fired, making a bad choice or two or three, poor judgment, bad haircuts and more.

And as baby boomers, we get to celebrate what all we’ve seen and it’s all part of us as well…landing on the moon, the battle for civil rights, protecting the environment…it’s not too late to stand up and make our voices heard when we see things going in the wrong direction.  We’re still here.  We’re smarter and more patient now (in most cases) and we have a lot to contribute.

So light those candles.  And make that wish come true.  Every day could be the birth of something wonderful—if we help make it so.

“Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be.” 

  Lauren Hutton