An odd little stretch of time

A year is an odd little stretch of time. To the Universe — that is, to any part of the Universe other than we humans — it is pretty meaningless. Just a bit of time that starts at some particular moment and ends at some other particular moment about thirty one million seconds later.

But we measure our lives by those funny little stretches of time. We really can’t help it. Like the scorpion says in The Crying Game, it’s in our nature.

For me this has been a year of unexpected changes, both large and small. As usual, the big events were not the whole show. Many things have changed gradually, the kind of change that can be so difficult to see while it is happening.

And that is why having so obvious marker as a year can be useful. We can stand on the high cliff of a December 31 (which is high only because we choose to name it so), and look back on that previous peak from twelve months before.

When we do this, what may have become lost in the more obvious and mundane moments can, all at once, jump out at us, and we see, with renewed clarity, the progress of our own lives.