The cake’s candles tell less than the wishes somebody has stopped making.

Age is easy to count and tells you almost nothing. What would actually describe a life is the list of hopes quietly retired along the way: the move not made, the reconciliation no longer waited for, the version of the future dropped without announcement. Some of that letting go is healthy and some of it happened too early, under pressure, without anyone noticing. Nobody puts that on a card.

Ask yourself, gently, what you have stopped wishing for. Then check whether each one was genuinely finished with or just quietly set down when things got hard. One might be worth picking back up.