MOITA OFFICIAL BLOG
ALL BIRTHDAYS
THE DAY WE ALL SHARE
There are billions of people in this world.
Different countries. Different languages. Different colours. Different religions. Different beliefs. Different families. Different lives.
Some are born into wealth.
Some are born into poverty.
Some arrive surrounded by family.
Some enter this world under circumstances they will spend a lifetime trying to understand.
But before any of those differences begin, something happens to every single one of us.
We are born.
That is where ALL BIRTHDAYS begins.
Not with cake.
Not with candles.
Not with presents.
Not even with age.
It begins with life.
When I started thinking about what a symbol for ALL BIRTHDAYS should mean, I realized very quickly that I didn’t want twelve months sitting on a calendar and calling that the story.
That would tell you when somebody was born.
It wouldn’t tell you what being born means.
So this symbol had to become something bigger.
It had to represent the journey.
TWELVE MONTHS. ONE HUMAN STORY.
Across the top are twelve spaces.
January through December.
Every month of the year.
Every birthday has somewhere to belong.
Nobody is left outside of it.
But those twelve spaces aren’t there simply to organize dates. They represent something much larger.
They represent the doors through which humanity keeps entering the world.
Every day, somebody takes their first breath.
Somewhere else, somebody celebrates their hundredth birthday.
A child is opening their eyes for the first time while an old man or woman is looking back across nearly an entire century.
Both belong to the same story.
And that is something we don’t think about very often.
A birthday measures age.
But birth creates possibility.
THE JOURNEY ISN’T JUST ONE PERSON
That is why the figures in this symbol matter.
There couldn’t be only a man walking through life.
There couldn’t be only a woman.
This is ALL BIRTHDAYS.
Men and women.
Boys and girls.
Children who will grow into adults.
Adults who will grow old if life gives them the opportunity.
Different people walking different roads.
Some roads will be easy.
Some will be brutal.
Some people will know exactly where they are going.
Others will spend half their lives trying to figure it out.
Some will fall in love.
Some will have children.
Some will build businesses.
Some will create art.
Some will travel the world.
Some will struggle simply to make it through another day.
Some will make terrible mistakes.
Some will do extraordinary things.
Most of us will probably do a little of both.
Because that is life.
A birthday doesn’t promise us a perfect journey.
It gives us another piece of the journey.
THE HANDS
Underneath it all are two hands.
For me, those hands are important.
They can be the hands that hold a newborn baby.
The hands of a mother.
The hands of a father.
The hands of a grandparent.
The hands of somebody who loves us.
But they can also mean something much larger.
They represent how fragile life really is.
Think about it.
Every powerful person who ever lived was once small enough to be held in somebody’s arms.
Every teacher.
Every doctor.
Every musician.
Every labourer.
Every king.
Every prisoner.
Every billionaire.
Every homeless person.
Every mother.
Every father.
Every person whose name ended up in a history book, and every person whose name history forgot.
At one time, they were all babies.
Helpless.
Dependent.
Human.
Before the titles, money, arguments, politics, borders, accomplishments and failures, there was simply a life being held.
That thought changes the way I look at people.
THE TREE AND THE ROOTS
Then there is the tree.
I wanted those roots visible for a reason.
A tree doesn’t begin with what we see above the ground.
It begins underneath.
Hidden.
The roots take hold before the branches can reach toward the sky.
Human beings aren’t that different.
We all have roots.
Family.
History.
Culture.
Places.
Memories.
People who came before us.
Some roots are strong.
Some are damaged.
Some people know exactly where they came from.
Others spend their lives searching.
But the roots are there.
And then life grows upward.
Branch after branch.
Choice after choice.
Year after year.
A tree carries scars from storms and still keeps growing.
So do people.
A broken branch doesn’t mean the tree never lived.
A scar doesn’t erase the person.
And another birthday doesn’t just mean we became one year older.
Sometimes it means:
I survived another storm.
THE STRANGEST THING ABOUT BIRTHDAYS
We celebrate getting older while knowing that time is the one thing we can never get back.
That’s the strange beauty of a birthday.
When we’re children, we can’t wait for the next one.
Ten.
Thirteen.
Sixteen.
Eighteen.
Twenty-one.
We count forward.
Then somewhere along the road, people start joking that they would rather count backward.
But the number was never the important part.
The important part is what happened between the numbers.
Who did you love?
Who loved you?
Who did you help?
Who did you hurt?
What did you learn?
What did you build?
What did you lose?
What did you survive?
What did you leave behind?
Those are the things a birthday can’t put on a cake.
SOMEBODY. EVERYBODY.
There is another idea inside this symbol that connects directly to what MOITA means to me.
The human face says: “This is somebody.”
The skull says: “This is everybody.”
That same truth lives inside ALL BIRTHDAYS.
Your birthday makes you somebody.
Your name.
Your date.
Your family.
Your memories.
Your life.
Nobody else has lived exactly what you have lived.
That individuality matters.
But underneath all those differences is the other truth.
We are everybody.
Every human being begins life vulnerable.
Every human being experiences time.
Every human being will know happiness and pain in some form.
Every human being will lose something.
Every human being needs something.
And eventually, every human life reaches its end.
That isn’t darkness.
That is what gives life its value.
If we had forever, maybe today wouldn’t matter nearly as much.
A BIRTHDAY IS MORE THAN A CELEBRATION
Maybe this is where we have misunderstood birthdays.
We treat them as events.
One day.
One cake.
A few candles.
A song everybody sings.
Then tomorrow comes and life continues.
But maybe a birthday should occasionally make us stop and think:
I am here.
Out of all the possibilities that could have existed, I exist.
I have a name.
I have a story.
I have roots.
I have scars.
I have memories.
I have made mistakes.
I have experienced things nobody else completely understands.
And as long as I am still here, my story isn’t finished.
That’s powerful.
ALL BIRTHDAYS
The words ALL BIRTHDAYS sound simple.
But the meaning isn’t.
It isn’t one birthday.
It isn’t my birthday.
It isn’t your birthday.
It isn’t about being young or old.
It belongs to the newborn and the hundred-year-old.
The man and the woman.
The person surrounded by family and the person spending the day alone.
The person celebrating the greatest year of their life and the person wondering how they survived the worst one.
Every one of them belongs inside this symbol.
Because every birthday represents the same impossible, beautiful fact:
A human life happened here.
A person entered this world.
They grew roots.
They walked a road.
They became somebody.
They became part of everybody.
And for however long their journey lasts, they leave something behind.
A child.
A memory.
A lesson.
A photograph.
A scar.
A kindness.
A mistake somebody else learned from.
A song.
A story.
Sometimes simply the memory of having been loved.
Maybe that is the real meaning behind ALL BIRTHDAYS.
Not counting how many years we have lived.
But understanding that we lived them.
From the hands that once held us, to the roots beneath us, to the branches we grow, to the people who walk beside us, life keeps moving.
Generation after generation.
January through December.
Again and again.
Different faces.
Different names.
Different stories.
The same extraordinary beginning.
Birth.
And one shared human journey after it.
So when I look at this symbol, I don’t just see birthdays.
I see life.
I see where we came from.
I see where we’re going.
And I see everything we have the chance to become in between.
That is why this symbol belongs to everyone.
ALL BIRTHDAYS.
ALL PEOPLE.
ALL STORIES.
ONE HUMAN JOURNEY.
