Anxiety Over Birthday Wishes

Birthdays: Every kid looks forward to their birthday. As we mature we start looking out side of the selfish child attitude and seek to make your loved ones happy for their birthday. I have grown so detached to my birth day that I discourage friends from taking interest in my birthday. Through my experiences with Ms B I have learned that in my attempt to discourage them I might be depriving them of something … a chance to give of themselves to me. This deprives them of feeling good about them selves when they see that they have met or exceeded my expectations for my birthday. Using the word expectation is a cold way to describe this social exchange and emotional behaviours on a birthday. Unfortunately this is what I seek to do when I think about someone’s birthday. I try to think of what their expectations might be and then seek to achieve or exceed them. Some birthdays have greater value then others, for example my father will be turning 70 and this is a special occasion. Perhaps it is special only for the idea that society has programmed us to think that this would be a mile stone. Like becoming of teen age, or sweet 16 or 20 or 25 or anything divisible in 5. Anyways … the big question is how do I settle my anxiety about meeting peoples birthday expectations without taking the emotions out of it.