Today I woke up and it was a different year.
Everyone else was still asleep, the house was silent, and the
sky was that soft shade of early-morning gray. I got up and made my oatmeal the
same as always (strawberries and oats drowned in almond milk). I checked my
email, nothing new there. You would never have known that the earth just spun
on its axis 365.25 times. You would never have known that sometime during the
extent of those rotations, we saw Venus for the last time in this century as it
passed between us and the sun, or that an Austrian man became the first human
to break the sound barrier without any vehicle assistance in a 24-mile freefall
at 833.9 miles per hour, or that India experienced the worst power outage in
the history of the world, or that the Lonesome George Tortoise became extinct, or that the Encyclopædia Britannica was printed on
paper for the very last time after 244 years, or that approximately 131.4
million hearts beat for the first time, 55.3 million beat for the last, and
that more than 7 billion still struggle to beat every day.
At least, in those quiet moments of eating my strawberry oatmeal, I
didn’t.
But even though I never felt the weight of giant seal marking the end
of the 12th year of the 21st century of the 3rd
millennium, exiling those last 365.25 rotations of the earth to the dusty
annals of history, never to occur again, I couldn’t help but feel a little wistful
as I mused over what made the year two-thousand and twelve so… two-thousand
and twelve-y. Perhaps I was Rip Van Winkle when I woke up this morning,
scratching my long, white beard, wondering where the time has gone. Can one be
homesick for a year? If yes, then I pine for 2012. There were many ups and downs,
but on the whole, those 365.25 rotations were oh-so good.
BUT… it is now the first day of the 13th year of the 21st
century of the 3rd millennium, and approximately 180,000 people have
already been born. I would say that’s a pretty good start to the next 364.75
rotations.
