I stepped into the street, slightly drunk and somewhat unsatisfied.
This was not how I intended to spend my 21st birthday. In my imagination, I expected to have a grand party, surrounded by all my friends, celebrating the occasion in the way one usually does for a 21st birthday.
But as the date approached, an increasing anxiety around the event paralyzed me, and I failed to make any concrete plans. What happened instead was that my sister and my (now ex-) girlfriend took me out to a local bar to celebrate. We ordered a drink, hopped to another bar, downed a beer, danced a bit, and before I knew it, the night was over and it was time to go home.
I was thankful to have people who celebrated my 21st birthday with me, but I was hoping for more. I had seen all of my friends turn 21 in extravagant fashion. Right then and there, I decided never to go without plans for my birthday again.
The following year, I found myself in San Diego with my family for my 22nd birthday. The year after that, I was in Rome, Italy. I noticed a trend starting to take shape, and I made sure that as long as I had the means to, I would spend my birthday traveling somewhere I had never been before.
It was a brilliant plan, perfect even. If I traveled somewhere new on my birthday, it would be memorable because I would always be able to say, “I remember my X birthday perfectly because that was the year I went to Y.”
But then 2020 came, the pandemic hit, and traveling abroad became impossible. My perfect plan was not so perfect after all. Disappointed but determined, I called my sister who lives in Eastern Tennessee.
“What if we went to Nashville for my birthday?” I asked her.
“Let’s do it,” she replied.
As the warmer weather arrived and people started to spend more time outdoors, COVID cases started to decline significantly. It was a time of anxiety and uncertainty, with the potential for a surge in cases looming.
But I made the trip nonetheless, and we went to Nashville. Waiting in line for Kid Rock’s Honky Tonk, we met a young couple from Ohio, with whom we ended up bonding and spending a significant portion of our trip.
The next year, 2021, I decided to take a trip to Greece and Albania with one of my best friends. The charm of Albania, paired with the beauty of Greece and its islands, made for an exceedingly memorable trip. The trip took place in July, not on my actual birthday. But I shrugged it off, satisfied with having made the effort to explore a new place.
In 2022, my sister and I journeyed to the American Southwest. We covered a lot of ground—Las Vegas, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Arches, Grand Canyon, and hundreds of miles of winding desert roads. Once again, I wasn’t able to go on my birthday (we had to go in May because of my sister’s schedule), but it didn’t matter to me, I was happy to have seen it all.
And now, in 2023, I am writing this on a flight to Paris on my 27th birthday. After spending the past month in a half visiting the UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France, I feel beyond grateful to have the chance to finish my adventures in Paris.
Some people are indifferent to their birthday. They prefer to treat it like any other day, but I have never understood this mentality. Perhaps they do this because they don’t want to accept the fact that they are one year older. But I have always had the belief that for one day, at the very least, you should feel important.
Because life itself is extraordinary, and without a reminder of how extraordinary it can be, what more can we hope to achieve on the other 364 days of the year?
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I stepped into the street, slightly drunk and somewhat unsatisfied.
This was not how I intended to spend my 21st birthday. In my imagination, I expected to have a grand party, surrounded by all my friends, celebrating the occasion in the way one usually does for a 21st birthday.
But as the date approached, an increasing anxiety around the event paralyzed me, and I failed to make any concrete plans. What happened instead was that my sister and my (now ex-) girlfriend took me out to a local bar to celebrate. We ordered a drink, hopped to another bar, downed a beer, danced a bit, and before I knew it, the night was over and it was time to go home.
I was thankful to have people who celebrated my 21st birthday with me, but I was hoping for more. I had seen all of my friends turn 21 in extravagant fashion. Right then and there, I decided never to go without plans for my birthday again.
The following year, I found myself in San Diego with my family for my 22nd birthday. The year after that, I was in Rome, Italy. I noticed a trend starting to take shape, and I made sure that as long as I had the means to, I would spend my birthday traveling somewhere I had never been before.
It was a brilliant plan, perfect even. If I traveled somewhere new on my birthday, it would be memorable because I would always be able to say, “I remember my X birthday perfectly because that was the year I went to Y.”
But then 2020 came, the pandemic hit, and traveling abroad became impossible. My perfect plan was not so perfect after all. Disappointed but determined, I called my sister who lives in Eastern Tennessee.
“What if we went to Nashville for my birthday?” I asked her.
“Let’s do it,” she replied.
As the warmer weather arrived and people started to spend more time outdoors, COVID cases started to decline significantly. It was a time of anxiety and uncertainty, with the potential for a surge in cases looming.
But I made the trip nonetheless, and we went to Nashville. Waiting in line for Kid Rock’s Honky Tonk, we met a young couple from Ohio, with whom we ended up bonding and spending a significant portion of our trip.
The next year, 2021, I decided to take a trip to Greece and Albania with one of my best friends. The charm of Albania, paired with the beauty of Greece and its islands, made for an exceedingly memorable trip. The trip took place in July, not on my actual birthday. But I shrugged it off, satisfied with having made the effort to explore a new place.
In 2022, my sister and I journeyed to the American Southwest. We covered a lot of ground—Las Vegas, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Arches, Grand Canyon, and hundreds of miles of winding desert roads. Once again, I wasn’t able to go on my birthday (we had to go in May because of my sister’s schedule), but it didn’t matter to me, I was happy to have seen it all.
And now, in 2023, I am writing this on a flight to Paris on my 27th birthday. After spending the past month in a half visiting the UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France, I feel beyond grateful to have the chance to finish my adventures in Paris.
Some people are indifferent to their birthday. They prefer to treat it like any other day, but I have never understood this mentality. Perhaps they do this because they don’t want to accept the fact that they are one year older. But I have always had the belief that for one day, at the very least, you should feel important.
Because life itself is extraordinary, and without a reminder of how extraordinary it can be, what more can we hope to achieve on the other 364 days of the year?
