HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY MATTER WHAT DAY IT IS?
Sunday, January 1, 2023
This year we need to hold our breath.
But who can spare the time?
We are so busy holding on for dear life – clinging to wallets and health-care cards, crossing our fingers in hopes that peace and a return to normal as we knew it would magically manifest. OK, maybe ‘don’t hold your breath.’
We keep track of time, as Einstein reminded us, “So everything doesn’t happen at once.”
We hope for a year of not being robbed of life or our ability to pay the freight for simply stayin’ alive.
This time of year, we slow our pace; there is less news for leisurely absorption, less work calling us, and many worker-bees are on extended holiday breaks from their hives with time to shop, visit, nap, play, watch sports and parades, and party our faces off …
That is for us – here – in this part of the world, where we comfortably sit pretty oblivious to what is happening elsewhere. Our elected leaders make decisions for us, assume proxy to spend our money, shape our laws and culture for us – or try to re-engineer society for us. They do this as deliberately as clever scientists in labs try to re-invent human life expectancy and the earth’s health prognosis.
And we feast.
Shame on us – too many people are starving.
And we walk around, unarmed and in the open. Shame on us – we should be afraid of bullets and missiles, despots and armies reigning down death and desperation on so many.
Our annual ritual of separation, one year from another, is a symbolic starters-pistol. It is an accounting function whereby we buy and sell our time, services, and goods.
Celebrations last night are now relegated to 2022 history – flipping over to the blank 2023 page of deeds, happenings, births/deaths, wild activities, weather, interconnected everything and interdependence too often ignored, it’s a new book.
Just for today, an open book, but once anything is written, there is no turning back. Sure, there can be changes of direction, recalculating myriad details without second guessing every choice by an A.I. tool (that is changing at warp speed), but we are in it now.
If we failed to plan, does that mean we planned to fail, or does it mean we subscribe to a different philosophy of how to get from A to B, from January to December, from the beginning to our end?
The clock is ticking. If you buy anything and pay by the week or month or subscribe to anything by the year, sellers are keen to bill you and collect upfront. If you are accountable to a landlord, mortgage lender, bank, or anyone else you pay – it’s due on days like this, and it’s late if not paid by tomorrow.
In times of great prosperity, these are easy days to start a new month in a new year. In times of poverty, the day on a calendar makes little difference to one’s hunger or lack of buying power – it sucks and is unforgiving.
When people enduring hardship are asked what day it is, their offhand answers don’t show ignorance of time-keeping; they might mutter, “How could it possibly matter what day it is?”
If you are on top of the world or barely clinging to the floor, this auspicious day IS different from all the others because it’s like a start at any place any race begins – the whistle sounds, we hear the report of a gunshot, or someone yelling, “Go!”, everything begins or ends on this day.
Day one.
We start at zero because so much of our lives, work, businesses and governance revolve around calendars; as one year ends, another begins, seamlessly transitioning old to new.
But it’s primarily an illusion; though many 1st of year promotions and appointments are produced by retirements, handing from old to new is true.
From where/when we count, from our date of birth till now, is a record-keeping process invented by humans. The earliest sapiens recognized the seasons and weather changes. In time the people caught up to the science that determined a single revolution of earth is once every 365 ¼ days, each with a sunrise and a sunset. That’s nature and cannot be changed. We have a legacy of calendars to determine the beginning and end, as have religions added their alpha/omega twists. Today we use the Gregorian calendar, first introduced in 1582AD, a modification of the Roman calendar introduced in 45BC.
Here in western Canada, we don’t have a wet/rainy or dry season; it’s more like six months of winter and six months of bad ice. For those potential visitors far away, don’t let that discourage you because we have bountiful crops and spectacular summers.
We all use the same calendar, and people the world over held their breath at midnight on January 1, 2000, fingers crossed that our world of computer-driven everything would not collapse.
If we desire to be accurate, we started about nine months before our birth date, shortly after our parents made love – sperm met egg, when they merged to form our life force.
Here we are, many years later, created by an act of babymaking.
We’ve been raised, educated, housed and fed – and steered in life by people who inspire us and by some who kick us in the backside too. As we encourage our children and their children to be open-minded, ambitious and free to chart their course, we also teach them about the science of earth orbits and the use of years and calendars as measuring tools for recording milestones and past events, as well as for planning our short-term future.
We must also caution them not to miss anything because later in life, we miss what we didn’t do, where we didn’t go, who we didn’t meet, and most of all, what we didn’t attempt.
History doesn’t ask questions, but it is full of answers. History is too often ignored for its lessons because we move too fast in our rush to get where we are going. I won’t add a corny Yogi Berra quote here, but I want to remind myself and readers who agree that our year starts today, and if we don’t know where we are going, we might end up someplace else.
When I began taking a serious approach to writing fiction, I attended a writers’ conference where I heard some terms for the first time when I was in a room where the presenter asked for a show of hands of those who were plotters and those who were pantsers (this term, used widely by writers, but my Merriam-Webster doesn’t know the word) – meaning those who began writing for a pre-planned plot vis-à-vis those who write by the seat of their pants, making it up as they went along.
Each year, on this day, I wonder which one I am. It’s too easy to answer, “Both.”
We can be some of each, and we can alternate depending on the situation – but for me, a plotter means someone who has a plan and then follows it; in contrast, a pantser has a general idea of where they want to go and exercises their right to change their mind, recalculate their direction, and make some things up as they go along.
When I began this column, I imagined something short and pithy.
The pantser within rambled and strayed a bit, yet stayed close-ish to my general idea that something beyond saying “Happy New Year” matters on this day to others, as it does for me.
Today is Day 1.
Today is zero.
We count from here in days, months, dollars, distance, and values.
Today we are no different than newborns from the frail, weak elderly ones; they all need love and care, food and shelter; they need to be kept warm and safe. Each year, this is where we begin another journey, equal if only for this one day.
I wish all of that for everyone.
Be warm and safe.
Be fed and housed.
Be ambitious, be bold, be creative, be kind, be strong, and be unrelenting.
Happy New Year.
p.s. I got two photo greetings yesterday wishing my happy New Year – one from AG in Cancun, and one from NB at Three Hills – thank you so much for sending those to me.
Reader feedback:
Mark, as usual, something useful and something thoughtful to end the year. Glad to see your resolve is constant. However, as you resolve to speak less and listen more, don’t forget to stop and smell the roses. My sniffer doesn’t work very well, so I got and view mother nature as she rises and sets. Happy New Year, Mark, and may the force be with you …, Cheers, from THRILLS (a.k.a. Three Hills), AB
Let’s all resolve to have a wonderful 2023. To you and yours, SB, Calgary, AB
|