Farewell to Inventions 2015: Who Changed?

There is nothing unique about today, being the first day of the year, in Gregorian timeline.   

The association we make and the dots we connect to describe seasons are purely subjective, at tad, personal. Some may ascribe hidden hints on this balmy morning (which is glaring, considering the stormy days before) as signs towards a better, brighter year. Whatever.

Take these, for instance:

• This is the perfect weekend.
• What a great day - a perfect vacation, by every inch of it.
• Really begins to feel like the holidays, doesn’t it?

These are the streets I grew up with. This small busy corner - which used to be the heart of the City, have cradled numerous parades, civic actions, political rallies, and too many a suburban rush. I took a snapshot of it - thirty minutes before an anticipated chaos. It is the late afternoon of the last day of 2014. It is the same scene though - like All Saint’s day, the local holidays, Valentine’s day, Christmas day, sale seasons, paydays. Come to think of it, the Christmas rush is exactly the same as people panic-buying in anticipation of a super typhoon.

The point? We provide the color and meaning into an otherwise steadily- moving and almost consistent flux called time, witnessed in silence by structures. We invented the rush, we came up with the negotiables - the pressures, the expectations, the madness - into the silently moving phenomena of life.

We may have celebrated, not celebrated, consumed in unholy volumes, got drunk, stayed sober, enjoyed, greeted, made up, stayed distant, been grumpy - the whole 24 hour lot and 365 days still rolled unperturbed. The same sun shone for all of us this morning because, like us,  it too does not have much of a choice.  

Yes, seasons and milestones should help us keep track of where we are, or hope to be in the future. Motion is beyond question, because it is meant to be. 

We move - but where to? Towards a past that we hope to redeem? To a future unseen? Or to a now, which waits for no one? We have progressed - in relation to what?

The street and its buildings remain inanimate. The ground, the sky, the stars, the sun, the moon - all quietly watch us fumbling moment after moment. It may help us to think that there is something immeasurable beyond. Something not measured by the Dow Jones, the GNP, the bank accounts, or the worldviews we possess. They say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Lucky old sun.