Wednesday, December 31, 2008

On A Point in Time:


The planet turned, the seasons marched on by in succession, day followed night followed day, all long before time was counted by the second, minute, hour, day, month, year.

It is all arbitrary. No, not the cycles, but the counting. At some point sixth seconds made a minute and then sixth of those made an hour. Why not one hundred or thirty-five or something more random like forty-two. Some person out there at one point in time decided that twenty-four was a good division to the day and sixty for one of those hours.

There are three hundred-sixth-five days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds in a cycle around the sun. All random and arbitrary numbers to count. And at any time an object in space or time could hit the earth and/or blow off a large enough portion of the planet to change that. One nudge and we are off our rotation or orbit by even a small amount and a new count and calculation has begun.

But that possibility aside why don’t we count the weeks? (Note the fact that it is missing from the list of counting tools in the first sentence.) There are fifty-two of them. We do it for travel. ‘On week five of our excursion we saw a…’ is noted in our travel journals. I want more notoriety for the lowly week. Who really cares if they don’t fit neatly into a year. Make an adjustment like we do for our days. A leap week. And why is a week seven days long?

Some one decided that a certain point in time was to be the start of a new rotation, the point where the, always moving, never ending, circle of time is noted to come around again. And this brings us up to New Years Eve.

It is upon us and doesn’t really change a thing. An excuse to celebrate. A time to look at our lives and accomplishments and take note. A time to cast off the old and put on the new. It is as good a point in time as any other. And it is here. So count on. Count those minutes of your life to collect and mean something. Count the weeks until we can do this again. But don’t wait for New Years Eve to count the blessings in your life. It is really only a point in time.

1 comment:

Judith said...

Just wanted to wish you a happy new year! Hugs! /jb