Years

I’m surrounded these days by reminders that the digits on the calendar are about to change. Lists of the best of everything in 2013 and promises of what’s ahead in 2014. Requests for year-end donations and plans for the coming year. Looking back and looking ahead. I guess the same messages have always floated around as New Year’s Day approached. But as the years roll by, they seem more compelling and more confusing. I'm find balancing on the boundary a little dizzying. 

For instance …

On solstice evening, we went to a wonderful party with a group of women friends. We burned candles to bid farewell to things we’d like to release from our lives as we finish this year and candles to welcome things we’d like to bring into our lives instead. The sun turns in its path, finishing a cycle and beginning another. Around the same time, I learned that two people in my life, two of my age peers, are very ill. One is seeing her last new year, and the other may well be. And then I heard my partner’s grandson, about to turn 12, talk about something he did “a long time ago,” even as his journey has just begun. Almost surely, this transition is experienced by my two peers as the close of a year, hopefully one laced with good memories. And it is just as likely experienced by this boy as a step forward into new adventures. Ends and beginnings. 

The yin and yang of time. The edge of the year.

So what, I ask myself, is it to me? I know the “right” answer: it is what I make of it. But my experience of this edge feels more complex than that. I understand that I’m responsible for what I create of this year, within the limits that reality imposes. And I also know that reality does impose limits. Among these is the fact that as I grow older (which, by the way, we all do), the years ahead look different—as do the years behind.

You’ve probably heard it plenty, especially from old folks: time passes faster as we age. In fact, anyone of a certain age is likely to be thinking it right about now: I can’t believe how fast this year passed! Well, it seems that there is considerable evidence that this is true—i.e., that the older we get, the faster time seems to move. That applies to individual hours, and it definitely applies to whole years. Two questions come to mind: (1) Why? and (2) So what?

As for why … some folks argue that it’s because we have fewer novel experiences, and novel experiences are intrinsically more memorable than familiar ones. The early-20^th century philosopher/psychologist (who was also, by the way, a brilliant writer), said it well:

"In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day… Each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.” 

Recent neurological research seems to bear him out–although it does so far less poetically than William James. During childhood, it seems, we devote a lot of attention, which translates to a lot of neurological effort, to understanding and mastering the simplest bits of information, the most basic skills—more by far than we now remember having invested. But by adulthood, the brain has adapted to so many sorts of input, has learned to process so many things automatically, that events do in fact flow by without our noticing them. They become James’ “contentless units,” and the years collapse into one another as we look back through the telescope of time.

Another explanation is simply that each day, week, year is a smaller part of our total life’s experience, so of course it seems shorter, if only in relation to the whole. After all, one day to an 11-year-old would be approximately 1/4,000 of her life, while one day to a 66-year-old would be approximately 1/24,000 of hers. So it makes sense that a day—or a week or a year—would seem much longer to an 11-year old than to a 66-year old. Who hasn’t heard a pre-teen say something like, “Back when I was a kid …” Point made.

Turning the telescope around, focusing forward rather than backward, other folks argue that time seems to move so fast because we have fewer and fewer years ahead. Seen in this way, the years ahead seem so very precious. Of course each one seems to disappear faster—like coins to a poor person who has few versus a rich person who can’t imagine the end of wealth.

So, in the swirl of endings and beginnings, I’ve been thinking about this. This transition, this edge—is it an ending, the close of a year … or a beginning, the opening of one? Of course it’s both. But I mean psychologically, for me, which is it? Or, perhaps more to the point, which will it be?

First, I agree wholeheartedly with James’ suggestion that having new experiences and learning new things make the years richer and give them memorable content. I’ve learned that lesson (unfortunately, over and over) in my own life. Novel experiences create memories, and memories give a year an identity of sorts: “2013: the year when I did a weeklong astrophysics course, when I climbed Storm King Mountain,” etc. And when years have an identity, they don’t “grow hollow and collapse” on one another.

But I’m not sure that this phenomenon—as noteworthy and psychologically important as it is—explains why the present moment or the years ahead seem so short. That part of time’s collapse needs, for me, an additional explanation. And here, I think, the “fewer years ahead” interpretation fits. When I look at my parents’ life spans—both of them died of so-called natural causes—and consider that mine is likely to be roughly similar (fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding), I can make a rough guess about the time I have ahead. And then, if I count backward that many years, I’m stunned by how recent it seems. That many years ago, I was doing x and y—but those things seem so recent! Is that really all the time I have left?

And here rests the challenge, the "so what?"—at least for me. Because if that’s all the time I have left, I had better make it time worth living, within the limitations imposed by reality. Yet, my penchant is to coast, to slip into comfortable routines, as I did with such ease when the time ahead seemed endless. So, I ask myself, if I woke up tomorrow to the news that my time was up, would I be content with my life as I’m living it today? I’m not talking about creating a bucket list here. I’ve written before about the concerns I have about bucket lists. I’m not talking about fantasies I want to realize some day. I’m talking about reality, today. Am I spending this day in a way that would make me content if it were my last?

Let me take stock: my partner and I made plans last night to spend time with old friends from San Francisco later this week, and I’m looking forward to that. This morning, I’m wrapping up arrangements for an interview for my radio show next week, which is exciting. I took today off from my editing work, a gift to myself of a leisurely day, which gives me great (rare) pleasure. I’m writing this blog, which is always huge fun for me. I’ll run some errands. (OK, yuk. Necessary life maintenance. I can feel fine about that, if not excited.) I’ll take a walk in the beautiful Colorado sunshine. If I have time, I’ll work on another blog. This evening, I’ll join the other folks in our KGNU collective to do a show on queer events of the past year … and maybe look forward to next year a bit. (There it is again, that old year—new year thing.) OK, would that feel fine as my last day? Yes. And now, can I say that every day … OK, most days (granting reality the right to intrude)?

Because, now that I think about it, we don’t have years—old ones or new ones. We have days, minutes. The only thing that demarcates Wednesday from Tuesday will be the date, the digits on the calendar. There’s nothing magical there. It’s just a day, a date. We may invoke it as a moment for review and anticipation, but we could review and anticipate any day. And as the days grow fewer (as they do for all of us), it seems like we might want to pay attention to each one while we can.

I think I’ll go take that walk.

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Solstice, cycles, and the Mayan calendar

Friday was Solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year. And it was simultaneously the moment when the days started getting longer, when the light began to return. It’s easy to understand how rituals grew up around this time of year. For weeks, even months, it seemed like the sun was leaving, dropping out of the sky to the south. How could we, being creatures who cherish and depend on light, not celebrate when it seemed to have changed its mind and started climbing back up the sky?

Not surprisingly, virtually every civilization has marked this moment in some way. Around the world, ancient calendars and other forms of time keeping showed some awareness of this change in the cycle of the days. Southwestern US Indians built structures that were perfectly aligned to this date, and, as we learned from endless coverage this year, the Mayans recognized 12-21-2012, Friday’s Solstice, as a key moment in their calendar.

I’m sure you all heard about the (supposed) Mayan prophecy that the world would end on 12-21-2012. This “prediction” became an excuse for end-of-the-world parties (including among high school kids, as I learned from the local filling station attendant, who had waited on several groups of such drunken revelers). And, as a website dedicated to this prophecy informed us, it also inspired thousands of people to flock to a mountain in France that was supposed to open up, revealing a space ship piloted by aliens that would take people away at the end of the world. Some folks traveled to an alternative safe place in Turkey.

Experts in Mayan culture, on the other hand, tell us that the Mayan calendar does not predict the end of the world. It predicts a new beginning.

The Mayan calendar is actually very complex. It’s based on several nested cycles, one within another, going back to the mythical beginning of the world, about 4111 B.C.E. on our calendar. One of these cycles is about 360 days long, similar to our year; another is about 52 years long, roughly a generation. And then there’s the “long count” calendar, which chronicles a cycle about 3000 years long. This is the calendar said to promise the end of the world. The long count does indeed mark 12-21-2012 as a special day—the transition from the first long-count cycle to the second. (Interestingly, after the fact, the website devoted to the end of the world now describes the day as a transition instead.) The next such transition will occur in about 4772 C.E., so it’s pretty safe to say we won’t be here for it.

Part of the discussion about the end of the world was the suggestion that the prophecy actually predicted the end of the world as we know it. This interpretation was favored in part, I imagine, because there’s a song to fit. In part because when it comes to the end of the world, the phrase “as we know it” is easier to swallow than the word “forever.” Perhaps in part because in some sense, every year, every day, every minute is the end of the world as we know it. No moment is ever precisely like any moment before it—if only because this moment is already a part of my past by the time the next one arrives. And in part because some people had somehow learned a more accurate interpretation of the Mayan calendar that recognizes this concept of ongoing cycles and renewal.

The Mayan calendar and our misunderstanding of it tells us something about ourselves. About how easily we accept misinterpretations of other cultures’ beliefs and artifacts, interpretations that obscure the wisdom those beliefs carry in favor of drama. About how easily we accept misunderstandings “sold” by folks who know how to market crises. But also, if we can step back from the hype, there’s something about the common threads that connect cultures and belief systems within cultures. And the threads that connect those beliefs with the world we all inhabit.

Like this notion of cycles. Solstice, the return of the light celebrated in some form across the centuries and across cultures, is at once the end and the beginning of a solar “year.” The Mayan calendar marks the end of a long count cycles and simultaneously the beginning of another. Cycles are like that. Life is like that. I often think of life as a sort of treadmill, with each generation fading into the one before and the one after. One generation slips off the front end, but the treadmill is never empty. There isn’t even a gap in the flow of generations because the generations flow into one another, each is both one generation and the next. Just as Solstice is simultaneously an ending, a transition, and a beginning.

We had a Solstice gathering on Friday night with a group of friends. We lit a lot of candles and dimmed the electric lights. We shared poems, writings, music, and personal experiences that spoke of darkness, light, and renewal. We talked (and talked and talked) about all kinds of things—about community and religion, about finding “light” in oneself, inspiration in music, hope in love, and comfort in the promise of home. About the “resurrection” that comes from the meaning and hope we leave behind us as we pass. And we talked about life and death. About the painful loss of beloved pets and dear friends, and about the new  baby recently born to other friends. We even talked about the Mayan calendar and its message of renewal. Without, I think, ever mentioning “cycles” per se, we talked about the cycles of our lives and of “life” beyond our lives.

Western cultures are so enamored of the notion of the self-contained individual. I wonder what we miss by thinking of ourselves in this isolated way. It’s true that if I focus on my self, I can identify a beginning and an end. But if I focus on cycles and on communities, then that demarcation disappears. Sure, beyond a certain point, my self-contained individual self won’t be here to witness the continuation of these nested cycles or the ongoing life of these communities. I’ll have stepped off the end of the treadmill.

But the Mayans had it right, I think: seen from the perspective of 3000 years, the moments that seem like endings are simultaneously beginnings, transitions. And there is no end to that.

Solstice and other miracles

We’re officially in winter, now. Solstice passed, the sun turned around from its descent, and now the days are getting longer—although the coldest weather and heaviest snow are (historically, at least) still ahead.

It’s easy to understand why people have always understood this annual return of the light to be a miraculous thing. It’s easy to understand why major faith traditions mark this time in late December as a holy time. Thinking about this, I realize that many apparently "ordinary" things strike me as miraculous. I don’t mean “miraculous” in a religious sense, although some folks might understand these things that way. I simply mean that they are so remarkable in their complexity, so striking in their steadfast reliability (so devastating when they abandon us) that words fail. For instance:

Solstice. Consider that marvelous morning when you can wake up and know, simply know that the days will get longer now. This seems so simple, but think about what it means. These massive planets are circling around a star, with all of them exerting tremendous force on one another. This sun star is surrounded by other suns, some (we now know) with planets of their own. These collect in spiral arms and wheel around a black hole that steadily consumes everything, including light itself. This pinwheel flies through the universe (maybe one of several universes) at unimaginable speeds, moving among other galaxies, all  pushing and pulling on one another. And the space around them all is laced with dark matter and dark energy that we can’t  see even with our most powerful instruments, although they make up most of the matter and energy in the universe as we know it. 


Yet, despite the complexity of all this, our particular tiny planet moves around its particular medium-sized star with such precise timeliness that we know what day will be the shortest of the year. Miraculous.

The Hubble space telescope. Launched in 1990, repaired and up-graded numerous times, the Hubble telescope continues to transmit the most amazing pictures of far outer space (like the one above)—as well as lots of other data that are not nearly as interesting to us lay people. This telescope, orbiting outside earth’s atmosphere, has taught us more about the forces at work in our universe than all of the work done before its launch. Miraculous.

The heart. Last year, I had a medical event (turned out to be nothing) that sent me to the hospital for tests. Among those tests was a heart ultrasound. I got to watch the monitor during that procedure, and it honestly left me speechless. The kids would say it was “awesome,” and so would I, and I would mean it literally. I was awed, stunned by the thought that this rhythmic pattern had gone on for decades, all day, every day. The various chambers and valves alternately contract and relax, open and close with timing as precise on a miniscule scale as the movement of celestial bodies on a scale too vast to imagine. And they just keep doing it day after day after day. Miraculous.

Evolution. Thinking about this heart thing got me pondering on how it came to be, this brilliant, intricate, precise, beautiful system for circulating nutrients and waste. Some would argue that such beauty could only come from a divine creator. Personally, I believe that, whether or not the process is guided by a God, evolution has crafted this remarkable organ as well as the other organs and organisms that make up our world. In my mind, this makes it all not less but more astonishing. 


How many tiny steps, how many mutations and adaptations, how many dead ends did it take to create an opposable thumb so we could grasp? An ear, with all its internal intricacies? A brain? And how many steps to fashion the precise lines on the face of the alpine forget-me-not, the colorful patterns drawn in feathers on a blackbird’s wing. How many gradual adaptations formed the varied shells on Galapagos tortoises that allow them to feed on their particular island but that would make it impossible to feed on others? What prolonged process of change resulted in the odd system whereby a newborn kangaroo clambers the distance from its mother’s womb into her pouch? Miraculous.

The Post Office. I know this seems like a leap from the sublime to the ridiculous, but think about the service that the post office provides for pennies. I heard someone on the NPR program “Wait, Wait! Don’t Tell Me!” put it like this: For less than 50¢, you can send a letter to a particular individual at a particular address in a particular town in a particular state, and within a couple of days, it will be delivered to precisely that person. Imagine how much you would pay a messenger to make that delivery! I’ve thought about this often and have always found complaints about the post office misguided. But I’ve especially thought about it during these last few days just before Christmas. I've seen several postal carriers climbing over snow banks long after dark, using headlamps to find their way, delivering mail to people’s homes through the holiday madness. Sure, the post office messes up some times. But usually, they get it remarkably right. Miraculous.

There are so many other things I could mention: the Constitution, prenatal development, the Mars rovers, language, the curiosity of small children, the way spider's web catches the dew. All, simply awesome!