The Calendar

            How disappointing it is to see all these people living each day like it already happened! They act like it is the same day from the previous year, as though we somehow ‘repeat’ our days.
            And what’s worse is that these people have chosen to group their days into things called ‘weeks,’ then labeled certain days as ‘weekdays and weekends’ and further demeaned themselves by associating certain activities with ‘holidays’ – As if the universe cares what we do on each day!
            But oh…how I wish that everyone would wake up to a new, different day, and understand the grand scheme that is right in front of their eyes, that our calendar system is only one extravagant illusion.
            How I wish people would awake from this slumber and open their eyes to the fact:

                        Every moment is a Once in a Lifetime experience.

            Labeling every day is just not right, especially when there are only seven absent minded labels to choose from. This is why I say to hell with all this MTuWThFSaSu jargon and insist on declaring each day its own special one-of-a-kind event.

            What has happened is that many years ago, a man called Pope Gregory XIII came up with our Gregorian calendar. A man, just like you and I, came up with a calendar (which was actually a revision from another man’s calendar, mind you) and then spread it all around Europe with the wonderful influence of prominent churches, infecting country sides and towns with a new way for people to keep track of their dismal days. [1]
            And now we have all these people caught up in this tumultuous rubbish of Gregorian years, believing what any sort of reasoning deems unbelievable. So, my dear Gregoriarites, let us reason.

            What precisely is a year?  

What is a month? What is a day? An hour? A minute? A second? A millisecond? Well, let’s see here…they are all just measurements of time!  We are all precariously measuring this extremely ambiguous and abstract idea called time, and yet investing so much effort in constricting ourselves to it.
           But, may I ask, what sense does it make in attempting to conform to something that does not conform to anything? We think that time conforms to our solar rhythms, our clocks, the beat of our drums, the decay of cesium atoms; we think that all these are valid ways of telling time, but they are only conforming – in time – to themselves, while time continues laughing away at its own accord.

            In order to get a better perspective on the idea of time, pretend we are traveling to the center of our solar system with Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson as a transparent eyeball...and then let us rest in front of the blazing sun. Take in the silence, the light, the warmth. Be still and listen to your thoughts…

            Eventually, we will find that no matter how long we sit in this burning intensity, there will not be any coherent sense of day or night – for day and night no longer take place. There exists only an implausible sense of continuum.
            A similar thought experiment can be done if we place ourselves in a far reaching region of the universe where we are only surrounded by the ravenous pitch black vacuum of space.
            As we sit in the same spot for what seems to be a few minutes, half an hour, maybe a few hours – it is getting hard to tell now – the idea of a day floats away and we are left only with this sense of time passing incoherently. And then we realize it is only this time which exists.

 As you can see, I am not dismissing the fact that there are Earthly ‘days’ of light and darkness or the occurrence of Earth’s cosmological orbit around the star we call the Sun. No, no, that is not what I am getting at. What I am denouncing here is this strict idea of a year made up of 365 ¼ individually recurring days. As I mentioned in the beginning, the idea that we repeat the day we have already gone through last year, the same day that supposedly already happened before - this is absolutely bogus.
           Though I am sure you are wondering, “How can this be a bogus idea when it is in fact based on an actual event?” Well, it is quite simple, really: Because you are peering at reality from a limited perspective. This Earthly-only observance is what blinds our mind from what really surrounds us.
            Just think about it for a moment: Earth is not the only planet in our solar system. Our solar system is not the only solar system in our galaxy. Our galaxy is not the only galaxy in our universe. And with all this talk about parallel universes and multi-verses, we do not even know if our universe is indeed universal! So, to get a real grip on reality, we must understand that this Earth is not the only place that exists. In fact, it is more so a kagillionth of a zillionth percent of what is really out there.
            When time goes by on Earth, time does indeed go by everywhere else. And it is this time that we should primarily associate ourselves with, not the numbers on our watch or the rectangular days printed on our calendar.
           Though let me warn you, ‘this time’ is much more elusive than the time our culture has made us familiar with. It is something that must be grasped with the whole of our mind and felt in each nerve of our body, because it is something that cannot be observed. We must feel it through perspective, through contemplation. And so, let us contemplate some more.

Here we all are, caught up in days of the week, when all we have is but one life. One life to live, one life passing us by. And as we know, it does not take very long to count to one, unless we happen to needlessly subdivide it into a bunch of sophisticated segments. Our time on Earth can be counted in milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, decades, or whatever made up unit of measurement we so choose – however, I suggest looking at your life for what it is: a life, in the self evident singular sense.
           Going a step further, no one is entirely sure where we go when our
so-called ‘time’ in this realm is expired. Yet, as creatures generally striving towards purpose, we are accustomed to basing all of our actions on our perceived destination. So, it makes one wonder – does our time here really matter at all? Could our lifetime just be another insignificant tick-tock in nature’s clock? Or does our individual life really matter, that is, is it of cosmological significance?

No matter the answer though, there is one question we must also consider:

                        Is there more to life than what happens after death? 

            Hmm... Yes, yes I say, because our life is all that we truly know we have, and there is one undeniable fact:

                       Aside from making the most of our time here,
                       there really is nothing better we can do.

(Continue to Property)