And the New Year…

Writing this on the 30th of December. I would go as far as to call this particular note more in the nature of unbridled thought flow. Or ranting. Is it the same thing? (Shrugs!)

One day left before January rears its bright new head at the world. One more day.

Will it bring about a difference? To some, positively. To others, not so much. Does it matter in the long run? I don’t think so. The universe moves on. Expanding. Creating life as it creates new paths. Going beyond what is to what needs to be. Inexorably moving. Unmindful of the tiny speck of dust that we live on. Worrying only about the larger scheme of things. How large they are, what they represent and what goal they serve is beyond our reach. We are a species riddled only with questions.

January will be here though. And we will pass into ‘another year’ labelled with four digits. What’s more the last two digits will be changed. People will say that the millennium is out of its teens and for the next ten years January will herald single digit changes ‘tracking’ the progress of a young adult. Then the millennium will become a mature adult. But when I pause to think, it appears to me that all of it is simply illusion.

What is the sanctity of the labelled year? What does it signify? Only that we started counting very late in the day. Our ancestors and their calculations, be it Hindu, Egyptian, Christian or many others  were also late in commencing to count. We don’t really know what transpired before we did start counting. Or what will transpire after we as a species stop counting.

Will it matter which year it really is? To whom will it matter in the universe? Or in the galaxy, or even in our solar system? We count doggedly, nevertheless. The futility of it all! (Shrugs)

Random thoughts! These. Do my thoughts even make sense to anyone but me? Do they make sense to me? (I guess they do to me, at some abstract, altruistic level). The universe moves on. Trudging sometimes, careening sometimes. Knocking over entire galaxies into each other, blowing out some stars, lighting up new ones. Experimenting. Like we do with our lives. Makes me agree with someone or the other that we are miniature models of the vastness in which we live.

And thus we experiment. January’s experiments are resolutions. February’s experiments are a little more serious. March’s experiments will be about investments and tax savings. April will be spent drawing up new budgets, targets to achieve and so forth. In between all of that we forget the universe and its ever expanding size and its grand plans and live our lives like we will never die. And when we do die, we are snuffed out, most of us. Erased, as if we never lived. We leave no mark behind. No legacy.

Except counting days from our start line to our finish line in years.

However, January will never stop rearing its bright head. Again and again. Over and over.

The universe will go on expanding. Again and again. Over and over.

Vadhan