By their very nature, birthdays are full of expectation.

On a birth date, nine months of pregnancy culminate in a single stretch, the peak of labor which releases with screams of new life. Often mothers and fathers wonder what their child’s life will be like and stitch optimistic uncertainty together with hope, love, and all the resources they can muster. For babies whose parents have known no such fabric, there is some sort of cosmic optimism, a gentle love, that breathes life into form and paints expectation with a different brush.

It’s worth noting that “pregnant” has a second meaning, outside of, though certainly related to, the development of a child inside a woman’s uterus. The second definition of pregnancy is “full of meaning; significant or suggestive” according to the Oxford Dictionary.

The suggestion of life – or more broadly the suggestion of something inside of something else – lights paths otherwise dimmed, giving the opportunity for meaning to arise. To see a pregnant being is to naturally expect that life will emerge from it.

As life progresses, the child grows, parents age, friends weave into the frame, and birthdays take on a new shade of meaning and expectation. Departing from the optimistic and sometimes imposed expectations of others, birthdays reveal different layers of awareness. Our choices, present circumstances, and mortality become more vivid.

Birthdays then become a space and time for us to reflect on the expectations we have for ourselves – the expectations we fell short of and those we wish to rise to in our coming journey around the sun. We must hold a sense of self-compassion as we walk between these extremes, as identity forms in the wake of our evolving self.

A lot of people claim not to like their birthday, the reason generally roots in some form of protection against past disappointment or sadness. When birthday celebrations are soured or neglected, when egos go to battle for the biggest slice of cake, walls erect swiftly around the heart of a child whose deepest hunger is simply to be loved. From behind those walls, the hardest light to see is gratitude.

Only when we let go of all the expectations around how others might see us and celebrate us on our special day of all days, the walls dissolve and the light of gratitude pours into the darkest cob-webbed corners of the heart. Without expectations of what life might be, we can play within the boundaries of what this life is and experience the beauty of how we might be celebrate each other.

In the light of gratitude, we play, with the children we were and the children we are, serving each other abundant helpings of joy and laughter, the very sweetness that connects us in this effulgent celebration of life.

words from How Can I Help? by Ram Dass & Paul Gorman (1985). fire on a bar in Hosuton, TX, taken by a dear friend, August 28, 2025.