THE PASSAGE OF TIME, AND THE ADVENT OF NEW YEAR 2018

“Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy – that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden

The observance of the coming New Year has long been a time celebrated and commemorated since human being first attempted to get a handle on the passage of time, of the movement of the stars and planets above them, of the changing seasons, of the migrations of animals around them.

Man started to structure his life by inventing seconds, minutes, hours and days. The Egyptians, Sumerians and other early civilizations hit upon the 60-second minute, the 60-minute hour, and the 12-hour day.

The first calendars devised by men centered on the lunar stages that eventually were deemed months. They were strung along together to form a year. Although they were functional, they were not as accurate as their inventors had wanted. Others were based on solar movements. The calendars had to be tweaked when the months started overlapping into the seasons, and like the Aztecs, who compensated by designating five "unlucky" days to make the time "fit" the calendar, they had to make adjustments.

The Mayas were not much different. Like the Aztecs, their sacred calendar is 260 days and the civil calendar is 360 days with 5 "unlucky" days that are not counted.

The Aztecs, for example, thought time was symbolized by a serpent flying across the sky because its body was in constant motion and when it molts also symbolized renewal. 

Things got to the point in Europe that the celebration of Easter kept slipping past the right season and it was up to Pope Gregory XIII to reform the Julian calendar. It was instituted in February  24, 1582 to bring the date for the celebration of Easter to the time of year in which it was celebrated by Christians everywhere. It was then that leap years were plugged into the calendars to make the adjustment every four years.

There are, however, other calendars used by the Islamic and Hebrew cultures. Iranians, Japanese and Ethiopians, and a number of other cultures have their own. 

Time, as Einstein posited on his theory of relativity, is not static. His former college teacher in mathematics, Hermann Minkowski, said that the universe: 

"The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality."

That's a bit too deep for our feeble minds to fathom. But time, as we see it, is a very subjective thing in human events. When you're in jail, the clock seems to slow down, or even seems to be going backwards. When you're having a good time, it seems to fly. And when someone dies, is that the end of time for them? We'll leave that up to your faith to decide.

But as Steinbeck posited above, it is the times that are "splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy" that are the most memorable. "Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.” 

Time, it is said, is of the essence and should not be wasted. It is worth more than money. It is fleeting. It also flies. And there's no time like the present.

We are about to fall over into another yearly measurement of time and humanity continues on the road to the future. Slash the new year with interest, try not to get wounded or to wound others by creating tragedy, hope it will be crevassed with joy and crevasse it with joy for others. Happy New Year 2018 (or whatever year fits your culture's calendar.)!