Today is my twentieth birthday. My day has not included frilly invitations inviting guests to an elaborate party with cake and the fixings. My day did not begin with me waking up refreshed and energized nor were my encounters today full of joy and laughter. In reality, I woke up, late, and sprinted to class with bed head and yesterday’s yoga pants on. I attended two classes, grabbed lunch to go at the library café, and retreated to my dorm room to shower and prepare for the introductory course I teach on Monday afternoons. My roommate taped a cute sign to my mirror telling me “Happy Birthday, beautiful!” and “Your 20!” (Yes, she said your instead of you’re – God love her soul) To my pleasant surprise, several of my students knew it was my birthday (somehow – kind of caught me off guard) and wished me well in class. Aside from this interaction and the annual sung phone call from my grandmother, every birthday wish I have received has been reduced to text messages, tweets, and Facebook posts. 26 text messages, 12 tweets, and 45 Facebook posts to be exact, 16 hours and 20 minutes into my birthday. Not to say that any of the wishes were insincere, technology has drastically changed our interactions. I can’t remember the last time I got a card in the mail that wasn’t a bill I needed to pay or an advertisement with coupons to the local pizza joint. Not only has technology shaped and limited our communication, birthdays are changing too. The organized parties and the excitement you feel each year are clearly things limited to adolescence. I guess that’s part of growing up.
I found a quote from Garden State, one of my favorite films, extremely fitting for today. It’s a little on the somber side, but it really puts maturing into perspective and definitely depicts how our goals and priorities change with age.
“You’ll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I don’t know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.”
-Garden State
So maybe it sounds like I’m a little bitter that the sparkle of birthdays has slightly worn off, but growing up has definitely shown me that the people who matter most in your life and those who have stuck around until your twenties are going to be the ones who never let you down. Spending quality time with them and relaxing when you have the chance beats any sugar rush you can get from that massive cookie cake. For now, I guess I’ll settle for singing Taylor Swift to the topic of my lungs and writing this twelve page research paper. This evening, my boyfriend’s parents are taking me to dinner (He’s unfortunately still away at school) so I’ve got that going for me. So here’s to the real world and here’s to my 20s with the ones I love by my side, wherever the road takes me.
With love from my dorm room,
Sarah Alexandra
