Thoughts For A New Decade

Birthdays have always been a selfish time of year for me. I always expected someone to care that I'm a year older, and it's as if presents are an easy reward for surviving. Friends were people who would remember, because that's what friends do, they remember your birthday. Every birthday I would voice out that I might want something material, simply because when you're younger you don't have the means to buy it for yourself. You like the thought of someone else being thoughtful about what you might want, and the thought of them being sharp enough to give you something you might want to have.

I've always known it to be silly to be that selfish, but I couldn't help it when I used to make a big deal about other people's birthdays. Other people's birthdays were occasions for me to be selfLESS; I don't know why, but it's just what I do. I would agonise over what to get them as a gift, because I wanted to show them that they meant something to me. Sometimes I spend ages in the shops deciding what to get. Sometimes I even do things for people I barely know. It was a way of reaching out, of saying: I value you. And even if they didn't know it, the time I spent picking out a present, or baking a cake, or even just buying a cake for them reflected upon the fact that I wanted them to know that they were special to me. Everyone deserves to feel special for one day.

And every year I'd wonder when anybody would make the effort for me. For a few years, somebody did.

Sometimes I take people's actions for granted because I expect it of them. The gestures made towards you that are unexpected always end up to be the ones that you appreciate. But the fact that I was taking someone's goodwill for granted was a sign that I didn't appreciate them as much as I ought to, and so, I've been trying to get them to stop.

But here I digress, because this year I was pleasantly surprised by my high school friends who planned a really lovely day out, photos of which I will post up when I'm feeling cheerful. It was something I really hadn't anticipated, because while we've tried to surprise each other in the past not many have succeeded in trying to surprise me. So I was quite touched to see that they had planned so far ahead. I guess that it's because we spend so much time apart, and as life gets harder we become nostalgic of the time where life was simpler. We end up missing the people that made life that simple, and who still do, even when times get so much more complicated than they used to.

As soon as I enter a new year of my life, something new always happens. Something that's always exciting and unprecedented, something to look forward to. I suppose this year I feel in somewhat of a limbo. I don't really know where I want to be in the next five years. I don't know what I want to occupy myself next year, IF there is a next year. I still don't know what I will be doing for the next few months. I don't even know who I'm seeing next week. I just don't know. And it's this not knowing that made me think I didn't know what I wanted out of life any more. All because for once there isn't a path ahead of me.

A few days ago I had some sense knocked into me (quite literally). Birthdays aren't benchmarks of what you have achieved or experienced, but what you have learned. They celebrate how much you have grown. What I failed to realise is that growing up isn't always about having a number of different experiences under your belt, it's how much you have gained from them. Sometimes you can do a lot of growing up just by sitting alone. Growing up is about realising the different possibilities that you hadn't considered while your mind was younger. Even though I've turned 20, and drawing ever closer to making even more life-changing decisions, there are still things to look forward to. I've just been too scared to walk through new doors so I turn back to old ones. I guess I have to stop clinging onto the juvenile dreams and reach on to some adult ones, in order to achieve something worthwhile. It may be heartbreaking, but it's probably the sensible thing to do.

The only problem is that I hate knowing that although we may be able to achieve anything, we might not be able to achieve everything we want to.