Birthdays are a good day to ask what this year taught you that last year’s version didn’t know.

A year passes in fragments and never assembles itself into a picture on its own. Without a deliberate look back, the whole thing blurs into a general sense of having been busy, and whatever it taught you stays unavailable because you never named it. The counting of years is automatic. The accounting is not.

Take twenty minutes near your birthday and answer one question in writing. What do you know now that last year’s version did not. Keep the answers somewhere. Read them all together in a few years and see what you find.