December and January bring countless advertisements, conversations, and editorials (of which I am one) that urge our making of new years resolutions. I hesitate each January to join the practice of making new promises and goals that will likely go unachieved if not forgotten all together by the time June roles around. I do not mean to discredit the process of self-reflection and self-evaluation that takes place as we make these new goals-hopefully to better ourselves as individuals-but I would like to question why we do it only once a year.
History is filled with different ways of measuring the passing of time, many of which fell short of being a reliable measure of self-progress. Babylonians kept pace with the lunar month, sporadically adding an extra month three times every eight years to keep up with the solar year. The incorrect length of the Roman year, as well as the failure to occasionally add extra days, had caused the calendar to be three months ahead of the seasons. To prevent another year of winter beginning in September, Julius Caesar ordered that the calendar be recalculated. As a consequence of the corrective action, the year 46 B.C. was 445 days long, earning it the title “the year of confusion” by the Romans.
Until an accurate system of keeping time with the solar year was created (in European nations) by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, keeping track of the new year was often arbitrary and inconsistent. But what makes the passing of a solar year with 365 days any more appropriate for making resolutions than a corrective year of 445 days? Ancient civilizations across the world learned long ago that the sun makes for a very accurate measure for sowing crops, building houses, and going to war, but when dealing with resolutions, perhaps we should remember that the sun also follows a steady pattern of rising and setting once a day.
As January of 2002 continues to slide away, remember that the new year provides a great but arbitrary marking of the passing of time to reflect and evaluate our lives. But also remember that we are given the rest of the year to continually resolve to improve who we are. Resolutions that may have otherwise been forgotten by February can be renewed and revised with the beginning of a new day, week, month, or individual life-changing event.
