Somewhere today someone is celebrating a birthday, but I truly wonder if they are celebrating the way they should.
There it is again.
The writer’s block.
A great big stubborn wall parked right in the middle of my afternoon like it paid rent to be there.
I stared at the blinking cursor hoping it would become generous enough to finish the story for me.
It didn’t.
Maybe I’m running out of words.
Maybe I should buy a dictionary and borrow someone else’s.
Or maybe…
Maybe it isn’t words that I’m looking for at all.
Maybe it’s a story.
Not the kind stolen from today’s headlines.
Those are everywhere.
They arrive before breakfast and are forgotten by dinner.
I wanted the kind of story that sneaks into your life without asking permission.
One that has always existed but somehow nobody bothered to notice.
This week was heavy.
Everywhere I turned someone was carrying something they couldn’t hold anymore.
Conversations weren’t conversations.
They were open suitcases spilling grief across the floor.
Everybody seemed exhausted from surviving things nobody else could see.
So I quit.
Not forever.
Just for an afternoon.
I went to the pool.
There, floating somewhere between laughter and cannonballs, I watched a little boy who couldn’t have been older than five.
He wasn’t thinking about retirement accounts.
He wasn’t checking his phone.
He wasn’t worried about politics, promotions, inflation, calories, heartbreak, or whether anyone liked his latest post.
He discovered a leaf floating in the water.
To him it might as well have been buried treasure.
I caught myself smiling.
Ah…
To be five again.
Before hearts learned they could break.
Before disappointment had a permanent address.
Before betrayal had a face.
Before you understood that adults were simply children pretending to know what they were doing.
I wondered what waits for him.
Will there be more good than bad?
Or more bad than good?
The answer isn’t mine to give.
It will become his.
I hope, with everything in me, that he chooses the good every chance he gets.
Not because life will hand it to him, but because someday he’ll discover that goodness is rarely found.
It’s usually built.
Maybe that’s what every generation has been trying to hand the next one.
Maybe we’ve just been terrible at wrapping the gift.
We laugh and say Generation Z is too sensitive.
Maybe.
Or maybe we weren’t sensitive enough.
We normalized working just to keep working.
We confused exhaustion with ambition.
We wore burnout like it was a medal.
We convinced ourselves that feeling nothing somehow meant we were strong.
Now they’re choosing peace over proving something.
Choosing experiences over possessions.
Choosing therapy over pretending.
Choosing boundaries over applause.
Did we get it wrong?
Or are they?
I honestly don’t know.
Then I think about gentle parenting.
There wasn’t much gentle about hearing,
“I brought you into this world, and I’ll take you out.”
Or walking outside to pick the switch that would introduce itself to your backside.
That wasn’t parenting.
That was weather.
It rolled in whether you deserved it or not.
Today…
Half our parents would probably be serving twenty to life.
Funny how time changes the verdict but not the memory.
Now comes Generation Alpha.
We call them soft.
Sensitive.
Fragile.
Maybe.
Or maybe they’re simply refusing to inherit emotional debts they never created.
Funny how every generation judges the next one for trying to survive the one before it.
Then my mind wandered somewhere it hadn’t visited in years.
Back before cameras followed us everywhere.
There are almost no photographs of the things we did.
Which means…
According to the internet…
None of it happened.
But I promise you…
If you’ve heard the story…
You should’ve been there.
Because it was glorious.
It started with Boone’s Farm Strawberry Fields.
Ended somewhere around Mad Dog 20/20.
There was a Trans Am.
A bonfire.
A crowd of teenagers spending the night at Darcy’s house.
Nobody actually knew who Darcy was.
Someone mentioned Devil’s Swing.
Someone else said Diamond Rock.
From up there you could see every star.
Even when the sky refused to stop spinning.
Nobody had Life360.
Nobody was sharing locations.
Nobody was posting proof.
Nobody knew where we were.
Nobody came looking.
And somehow…
We all made it home carrying stories instead of evidence.
Maybe that’s why memories feel heavier than photographs.
Pictures remember what happened.
Stories remember how it felt.
Tonight I’m eating a hot honey chicken bowl.
Counting calories.
Reading labels.
Protecting my health because somewhere along the way I finally realized this body isn’t something I’m borrowing.
It’s something I’m responsible for.
Funny how getting older slowly teaches you to care for the things you spent your youth trying to destroy.
Today is someone’s birthday.
Maybe yours.
Maybe mine.
Maybe someone you’ll never meet.
Everyone keeps celebrating the number.
Candles.
Cake.
Presents.
Another trip around the sun.
But I don’t think that’s what birthdays were ever measuring.
I think we’ve been celebrating the wrong person.
The birthday doesn’t belong to the age you became.
It belongs to every version of you that quietly disappeared so this one could exist.
The fearless five-year-old.
The reckless sixteen-year-old.
The twenty-year-old who thought forever had an expiration date.
The thirty-year-old chasing things that never wanted to be caught.
The forty-year-old learning to put them back down.
None of them died.
They just handed you the pen.
And every birthday…
Without realizing it…
We gather to celebrate the only person in the room who no longer exists.
Which explains something that’s been bothering me all day.
I wasn’t looking for new words.
I wasn’t even looking for a story.
I was looking for the people I used to be.
The strange part is…
They’ve been writing every page I’ve ever called mine.
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