If you know me at all, you know how much my birthday means to me. What’s more special is my sister’s birthday is just 2 days after mine. It’s a tradition to spend our birthdays together and celebrate. This year we decided to travel for 4 days to Berlin with our close friends. Beginning of March, Mayhem struck the world with Coronavirus. Starting from China, working its way to Europe, USA and then India. Given the situation we couldn’t make it to Germany, we re-planned to two-three other destinations. Finally, settling on Aamby Valley. As the date got closer, the outbreak grew stronger. The stronger the outbreak grew, our options got limited. We just wanted to be together and make it unforgettable.
Unforgettable it was!
She was in Dubai, I am in Mumbai, my parents and brother in Jaipur. What we thought would be an uneventful day turned out to be one of the most precious birthdays I have ever experienced!
Clyde took it upon him to make sure I would smile all day. He got balloons decorated all over our house and even painted a card for me! My mom, sister, brother and best friends had a zoom call with me through the night and even learnt a choreographed dance and performed on zoom from their respective destinations. My family from Vancouver baked a cake for me and got me to virtually cut it. So many of my other friends and family got together and sent their wishes through videos which my sister compiled for me. I feel so grateful to have my friends and family who went out of the way and arranged cakes and balloons for me to brighten up my day.
The amount of effort my family, friends and Neighbours made was overwhelming. My Instagram Community also poured my day with an abundance of wishes!
Usually, on birthdays we barely speak for a few minutes, accept the wishes and hang up. But a blessing in disguise through this lockdown was that everyone was free, and I had the pleasure of catching up with so many people for at least 15-20 mins each on the phone or facetime.
There was not a dull moment throughout the day. I was just too happy and had an incredible celebration.
Through this, I feel so blessed and grateful to have had all this time with everyone. Yes, what’s happening in the world is sad and it’s a tough time. But if through these tough times we can make memories and cherish each other then that’s a great take away from this experience. We have been given this time to self-reflect and priorities our lives, learn new skills, indulge into passions we otherwise never had time for.
Perspective plays an important role in situations. You can make it through a tough time wallowing in self-pity and negativity or you can choose to make the most of it and cherish your time and people. During this time, feeling low and worrisome about the future is natural. But, please talk to your friends and family. Reach out and talk to your partner. Find productive ways to stay busy. We have to social distance ourselves physically but not virtually. Connect to friends and families overseas. I have had the pleasure of connecting to my best friends from USA & London and all over which otherwise is not possible because of all our busy schedules and time differences.
I am so grateful for this time and there has been a silver lining in all of this. Through mine and my sister's birthdays we all had something to look forward to, a reason to dress up, connect on deeper levels with friends and family, to self-reflect and realign priorities, to work on ourselves, to grow our skills, learn new things.
It’s beautiful to see the unity in the world through this. So many people from all around the world are making efforts to contribute to those in need in their own way. Someone is donating money to charities, someone is feeding dogs around their house, some are distributing food, hand sanitizers, gloves and masks and how can we forget those heroes on the front line in the hospitals and cops who are working around the clock sacrificing their lives to save the world. Now isn’t that the beauty of humanity also in the face of adversity.
I hope and pray that all of you are making the most of your time and healing. Don’t worry about what will happen tomorrow. Make the most of your time now. We can’t predict what’s going to happen tomorrow, especially with all this uncertainty. So, when the time will come to have faith in yourself and the universe that we will all be shown a way out of this. Stronger and better!
Please stay safe at home in the meantime and take the necessary precautions advised. Wishing all my Arien Friends a very Happy Birthday! Have a Magnificent Day!
Drop me a comment and share your thoughts!