From Birthdays to Budgets: To Know Someone is To Honor Them

As a young adult, I’d celebrated people in the way that I wanted to be celebrated – which was how my family celebrated different occasions growing up – because that’s what I knew. Throughout life, as my curiosity for how to know and love people grew, I got really interested in learning about them from this angle of celebration.

I once was madly in love and would play out in my head how I would propose to her. When my dad proposed to my mom, he fetched her in a limo, took her to a private, candlelit dinner, and presented the ring at the bottom of her champagne glass. “Proposal” – my brain registered. Intimate, romantic, private.

The proposal I’d planned out in my head was something like my dad’s. Intimate, romantic, and private. One time I asked her, how would you want to be proposed to?

“I’d want you to rent out a venue, invite all of my family and friends, and propose to me in front of everybody. And I’d want to be surprised. So don’t tell me when it’s going to happen.” I was shocked. I had never thought of an engagement panning out this way. And it made so much sense. She was Puerto Rican. Celebration was together. Loud. Bold. Communal.

I was so moved learning this. It felt like I knew her on a whole different level. And then this was the proposal I’d play out in my head. And because it was so uniquely her, it was even more moving. It was the first time I truly understood how differently two people can imagine the same concept or milestone.

At some point I realized we’d been celebrating her birthday wrong. Again, I’d been celebrating her in the way I knew to celebrate birthdays, which was on the same end of the spectrum as my father’s proposal. Small, intimate, private. With your immediate family or your partner.

One year, she threw me a birthday party that I could have never anticipated. She blindfolded me, walked me 20 minutes through the city, and when she took the blindfold off, I was shocked to see half of my graduate class at the best brunch spot in town to celebrate my birthday. Literally shocked. First, I never could have anticipated this surprise. That is not something I grew up with, nor would ever expect. Second, I couldn’t have anticipated that so many of my friends would spend half their Saturday celebrating me, because birthdays were for your immediates. I felt so loved. So special. And you best believe I cried.

I’m bummed I can’t find the Polaroids of my surprise party, but thought this would do. Photo by Andrii Solok on Unsplash.

That experience broadened my idea of what it means to celebrate a birthday. Now, I *choose* to celebrate with my friends. I choose to be louder about my birthday.

All of this to say, we don’t know what we don’t know. We all have different desires, needs, and preferences rooted in our families, cultures, and life experiences. Learning about the other ways people celebrate can alter our understanding of celebration.

I say this to underscore the necessity of engagement in public planning and budgeting. It’s not enough to know someone would like a birthday celebration. We must know how they celebrate. One’s idea of a birthday might be totally different than another’s. It’s not enough to know someone wants to feel “safe”. We must know how they feel safe. 

And if we have a limited amount of resources with the goal of planning a celebration to honor another person, it’s best to ask that person how they’d like to be honored. At the end of the day, this is how they feel most loved, how you show you care, and how you get the highest return on your investment.