A New Bloom

Today — every day — I’m grateful for what I’ve had because tomorrows are never promised.

If you are online tomorrow, instead of posting something on my social media, go out and care for your elderly neighbor; have lunch with a friend; be nice to the person at your grocery check-out line; volunteer at your local shelter for people dealing with homelessness.

Again, I do appreciate well-wishes, but let me keep it real.

If the only reason to reach out is because the thing in the sidebar reminds you it’s my birthday, if that day is the only day you think of me, if you never read my (now infrequent) posts, if we have no other connection, are we connected? And if not, it’s okay, really! Life’s too short for platitudes.

If this post feels insensitive, it’s not. These are honest words.

We’ve come to a societal space where connections are superficial and friendship is defined by the number of hearts or ‘likes’ we give one another. We don’t reach out, or if we do, it’s because we need something. Or feel guilty because we haven’t reached out in X number of months. Or because the sidebar thing pings and alerts us that we should at least offer a ‘HBD’ (really … we can’t even spell words out anymore … ugh!).

I don’t want that.

If you are someone who knows me, I mean really knows me — like we’ve spent time in the same room and not online, or we’ve had a walk together, or we’ve worked together, or taken a meal together, or laughed or cried together in a real space and not online — please don’t do one of those HBD posts. Don’t send me a private message, just to let me know you remembered. Please. Just. Don’t.

Instead, lift up a prayer for me: say ‘thank you’ to the Creator that I’ve made it one more year. Pray that I make it another. And you don’t have to post to me to tell me you did it, because then we’re right back at the start of this post. It will tell me you don’t know me, that we aren’t connected in more than a superficial way.

Thank you. I love you, really. Honestly.

And because I don’t want to be one of those reminded-by-the-ping things, I likely won’t post a platitude on your birthday either.

If I have your postal address, you might get a card in the mail instead.

If you don’t, that doesn’t mean I don’t care; it likely means one of two things:

1. I’m forgetful, which is highly likely.

2. We aren’t really close enough that I know your birthday.

But that’s life, right? If we’re honest, we can admit that and it will still be okay.

Peace. Today and always.