Some things don’t change. We are creatures of habit. But we’re also creatures of evolution, and while basking in the happiness that familiarity brings, we also find ourselves on our birthdays with a heart and a brain full of things learned. So, taking my inspiration from a Don Hall tradition of recounting those things leaned in the past year, here’s the short list of what my forty-first trip around the Sun has revealed to me.

He was born of a non-virgin non-Mary.

He was born a month prematurely, disrupting his mother’s plans for a large feast of Italian beef sandwiches, dipped, with all the fixings.

A birthday wish is not something to be taken lightly. This is not a simple loose eyelash or a shooting star you’re wishing upon. This is your birthday wish and you only get one for the year. It needs to count.