When you’re a kid, your birthday is the most exciting day of the year. It’s a day all about you when your friends, family and peers show you how much they appreciate you being alive. You get cake, presents and get to spend time with the people who mean the most to you.

Every year, however, birthdays become less exciting. It is an undeniable fact that the further you get into adulthood, the less people you have surrounding you all the time. People have busy schedules because they take on more responsibilities. You don’t get bombarded with presents anymore because the older you get, you realize the things you want the most cannot be bought.

People can no longer attend your birthday dinners because they have a “family thing” to go to, or have jobs that have conflicting schedules and so forth.

Not only this, but people realize that your birthday is no longer a huge celebration. People go on with their days and to most people, it’s just another day of the year passing by in 24 hours.

I also know a lot of people who think, “Great, I’m another year older…I am that much closer to dying.”

Once you pass the string of memorable milestone birthdays (like your 18^th birthday when you are legally an adult, and your 21^st birthday when you can finally get drunk legally), your birthday loses a little bit of meaning.

Today I turn 22 and I don’t feel any different. I feel like I am already way older than that because of my lifestyle, choices and level of maturity I had to reach sooner than most. Today is simply another day of the month for me. I go to school, work, then go home to do homework. Yay for Mondays!

Twenty-two is not a super exciting birthday to have, regardless of how exciting Taylor Swift made turning 22 seemed.

Another reason birthdays aren’t as awesome as they were when we were kids is because the older we get, the less friends we have. It is just a part of life that as the years go by, your social life dwindles down to a nub. Being an adult is a bit lonely at times. Not to say this is a sad or bad thing, but “adult-ing” means a lot of alone time.

That means that you don’t have a classroom of friends singing you happy birthday and embracing you with presents, cards and cake.

I don’t want people to read this article and be consumed by sadness, however. There is an upside to getting older and celebrating your birthday: you realize who in your life really matters and really cares about you.

When you’re young, all your classmates wish you a happy birthday because the teachers want you to feel important and recognized on your special day.

But when you get older and teachers don’t force this recognition, you see who really cares about you. The friends who remember your birthday are the ones who will go out of their way to still make you feel special, no matter how old you are.

They are the ones who will throw you a surprise birthday party, spend time with you, take you out to celebrate, write you a special note or give a speech of how important you are to them, etc.

Birthdays are a great way of filtering out the ones you want to keep around.

Even simply saying happy birthday implies that someone acknowledges you enough to recognize you matter; it says that your existence means something to him or her and deserves some sort of recognition.

Even though you may not have a myriad of people wishing you a happy birthday, it makes you appreciate the ones who do still want to make you feel special on a birthday that might not be that important to you.

Make sure you reciprocate that love on their special day as well.