Birthdays can bring out the party animal in adults and kids. A particularly exciting celebration in the past inspired this dignified birthday cartoon.
When a birthday comes, we try to find new and unique ways to express our good wishes. Here are a few, dignified examples if you came here, searching for the right words for a birthday card. After all, birthdays are great ways to put someone in the spotlight who rarely gets recognition.
Cartoon of a boy celebrating. The caption says, “When summer break came, Mark couldn’t help but worship.”
In the United states, the kids are itching for summer vacation. I remember how exuberant everyone felt at the end of the school year. It took about three days before the kids were bored and we were looking for something to do. It isn’t until you become adult do you realize quiet, boring times are a real gift. The trick is to live each day as the celebration it is.
It’s the simple things that make a birthday the best. Whether it’s a balloon, cake or noisemakers, it doesn’t take much to get a celebration going. It’s the little, frivolous things that make a celebration fun.
When my daughter was seven, she found out her mom was serving shish kabobs for dinner. When she discovered this, she immediately searched for some beach party costumes we had stored and prodded me to celebrate. Since we were having shish kabobs, it was naturally a time for a luau, right?
Kids are great for parents because they teach grown ups to lighten up a little. When life gets tough, look for reasons to celebrate. Even if you can’t find something, observe your kids, they can teach us to lighten up and enjoy the world around us!
Lawrence Wilson had a good blog post today on five ways to unlock your imagination. He pointed out the things that bring him closer to God also fuel his imagination.
Playfulness was the one thing that really struck out to me. I realized playfulness fuels my creativity and make me feel child-like. That’s a good thing. Preschoolers and early elementary kids are so creative in their play. One of the tragedies of this world is we lose that creativity as we get older. Why is that?
One reason is kids don’t have the experience of failure. The world is new to them. They haven’t faced a friend who ridicules them for doing something out of the ordinary. What’s wrong with wearing a tutu with swimming flippers and a sunflower hat? Plenty if you are in elementary school! You’ll be branded as a weirdo before you can turn in your tutu.
But it’s that same kind of playfulness that can give us a creativity breakthrough! Oh, to be a child and have no worries about doing something society brands nonconformist!
Another reason is when we’ve tried something, and it doesn’t work, we hesitate before we do that again. That’s good for a preschooler when he is doing something that could be dangerous. It’s not so good when it comes to creativity.
When I teach, I look for ways to be creative. Ask yourself silly questions. What does love and pepper jack cheese have in common? What does an aardvark have in common with teaching perseverance? It’s those little mind games that can set your imagination free. After all, humor is all about surprise. We laugh when we connect something that normally doesn’t connect.
Here are a few ways to generate a creative brainstorm: