Birth is your beginning. It is a window to the chance of a lifetime, the chance to fulfill your unique mission. A birthday is much more than an occasion to receive gifts. It is a chance to remember the day that a major event occurred, to celebrate and give thanks and to reflect upon how well we are fulfilling our calling.
Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that G-d invested in you at birth is present once again. It is our duty to be receptive to that force. How do we do so? By committing to a life guided by G-d's will, and by using the abilities and resources we were born with to perfect ourselves and society, making the world a fitting and sacred home for G-d.
A birthday is a time to celebrate birth itself, the joy of life. It is also an occasion to rethink your life: What I have accomplished and what can I accomplish? Am I spending my time properly or am I involved in things that distract me from my higher calling? How can I strengthen the thread that connects my outer life and my inner life?
To recall our birth is to recall a new beginning. No matter how things went yesterday, or last year, we always have the capacity to try again. Your birthday is a refresher, a chance for regeneration--not just materially, but spiritually.
There is no better way to celebrate a birthday than to commit a special act of goodness, a kind deed, something that you did not do yesterday. Your inner goodness, your soul, wants to express its thanks for being born and alive.
Such an act of kindness gives G-d great pleasure because He sees that the child in whom He invested, the particular child he wanted to be born on a particular day, is living up to its potential. And nothing, of course, gives a parent greater joy. This is the true experience of birth, the true beginning of a life of meaning.
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