Today, you turned an ordinary birthday into light.
I’m writing this in my wheelchair by the window in Tirana, listening to the low growl of traffic and the distant honk of impatient horns drifting up through the open glass. The smell of strong Albanian coffee is still on my hands, and my phone is finally resting on the desk, warm from hours of buzzing. Inside that small rectangle of light, you all showed up—and I want to talk to you about what that really meant.
Three Lies About Birthdays Your Messages Destroyed
There’s this first lie we tell ourselves: birthdays are about gifts, cake, and forced smiles. This morning the room felt cool against my skin, the sky a flat sheet of pale grey over Tirana, and I honestly didn’t care about presents or balloons. What I wanted, deep down, was the soft sound of a message arriving, the small flash on the screen with my name in it, the feeling that somewhere, in someone’s noisy kitchen or crowded office, I crossed their mind.
The second lie says online birthday wishes are shallow, just digital confetti tossed by habit. You and I scroll past so much noise every day—bright screens in dark rooms, fingers sliding over cold glass—that it’s easy to think a “Happy Birthday” is just another tap and swipe. Guides online are full of ready-made thank-you lines because so many people feel overwhelmed and unsure how to express real gratitude for all those notifications . But when I saw your words, written in your own way, they didn’t feel like copy-paste; they felt like warm voices breaking through the static.
The third lie is the harshest: people are too busy to really care. The world outside our windows sounds like sirens, angry voices on TV, the rumble of bad news from Ukraine and beyond, and it’s easy to believe everyone is locked in their own struggle. Yet today, my phone vibrated like a tiny festival in my palm, message after message, each one a few stolen seconds from your crowded, coffee-stained, noisy day. That steady rhythm of pings quietly destroyed the idea that we’re all too busy to love.
What Actually Happened Today
So here’s what actually happened, stripped of drama and filtered lights. I woke up to the faint hiss of pipes in the walls and the chill of the wheelchair frame under my hands, thinking mostly about work for Free AstroScience, my blog, and the heavy echo of war on our European doorstep. I’m from Rimini, now living in Tirana, and I honestly thought this birthday would just slide by—another date on the calendar, another candle, nothing special.
Then the first message landed with that familiar soft chime, lighting up the dark screen like a tiny sunrise. Then another, and another, until the sound turned into a sort of gentle rain of notifications on the wooden desk. Some of you wrote long notes that felt like warm blankets; others sent just a few words that still hit like a hug.
I’ve read a lot of advice on how to say thanks for birthday wishes, full of polished phrases about hearts overflowing and days made brighter . All of that is nice, but here’s my simple truth: your messages were the best gift I got today, better than any wrapped box or sweet slice of cake. You didn’t just remember a date—you reached through noise, dust, and deadlines to tap on my shoulder and say, “Gerd, I see you.”
One Small Number That Says Everything
The scientist in me refuses to stay quiet, even on my birthday. So I did a rough count, staring at the slightly greasy glass of my screen: let’s say about a hundred of you reached out in one way or another. A quick text on the tram, a voice message with background chatter, a Facebook post typed at a messy kitchen table.
If each of you spent just thirty seconds thinking of me and sending that wish, that’s around fifty minutes of human time given as a gift, packed into this one day. Almost an hour of shared attention in a world where every second feels like it’s fought over by apps, alarms, and endless breaking news . That single number sits in my chest like a warm coal, glowing quietly: your love arrived not in grand gestures, but in dozens of tiny, very real moments.
A Sky Full Of Human Stars
You know me: president and curator of Free AstroScience, stubborn space nerd, degree in astronomy and physics, always talking about galaxies while the espresso smell still hangs in the café air. When I looked at all your messages, I saw them the way I see the night sky over Albania on a clear, cold evening—each notification a star, each name a point of light. Some were bright and long, like the glow of Venus at sunset; others were faint but steady, like distant stars just above the city’s orange haze.
In the Milky Way there are something like a hundred billion stars, but today I didn’t need that many. My little constellation of friends, family, readers, colleagues, and quiet supporters was enough. I’m keeping the science simple here on purpose, so you don’t need a textbook—just imagine standing under a dark sky where every twinkle is a person who stopped, breathed, and thought of you.
When the notifications slowed, and the room fell back into its usual mix of street noise and humming electronics, I rolled my chair back and just stared at the blank wall for a moment. It felt like leaving an observatory after hours of watching the sky, eyes still full of light. That’s what you did: you turned my phone into a personal universe and filled it with kindness.
A European Birthday Wish: Peace, Now
I’m European, and I want something very simple that somehow has become very hard: peace in Ukraine, now. No excuses, no more explosions in the night, no more children falling asleep to the sound of artillery instead of crickets or distant traffic. I condemn every form of violence and extremism, from every political side, no matter what colour their flag or what slogan they shout.
When I read your gentle words on my cracked screen, with the faint smell of rain drifting in from the street, I kept thinking about the people who wake up today to sirens instead of birthday songs. If a few seconds of your time can lift me so much, imagine what real, steady care could do if we stretched it beyond our small circles. What if the tenderness you showed me today—this soft, everyday love—reached those who are hiding in basements, listening to the dull thud of distant shells?
My birthday wish, as a European and as your slightly emotional astronomer in a wheelchair, is simple and stubborn: that the love you gave me today refuses to stay inside our private chats. I want it to leak out through conversations, choices, and votes, until it reaches the tired streets of Kyiv, the cracked buildings, the hands pulling people from rubble. If we can find time in our busy lives to send one person a kind message, we can also find strength to say, clearly and loudly: no more war, from any side.
From My Heart To Your Screen
I know there’s a classic line people use: “I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you to everyone who took time from their busy lives to wish me a happy birthday” . Tonight, sitting here with the faint whirr of my laptop fan and the smell of cold coffee in the air, I feel how true that sentence really is. You had a thousand other things to do—kids shouting in the next room, emails piling up, pots boiling over on the stove—and you still chose to think of me.
So here is my honest answer to all of you. Thank you for the messages, the calls, the posts, the quiet thoughts you never even wrote down. Thank you for every “Auguri,” every “Happy birthday,” every silly sticker, every line that made me laugh out loud in this small, echoing room.
You made today feel less like a date on a calendar and more like a warm hand on my shoulder. You reminded me that, even in a noisy and violent world, kindness still finds its way through glass screens, tangled wires, and crowded timelines.
From Rimini to Tirana, from my desk to your pocket, from my very human heart to yours: thank you for remembering my birthday today, and for sharing your time, your words, and your love with me. I love you all.
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