Happy New Year! 2012 is here, and I personally hope that it doesn't go by as fast as 2011 appeared to. Of course, a person had to be living under a rock the past couple of years to not know about what 2012 is really "known" for. It seems like we always have to be worried about something...there are countless shows on the cable that show our demise by super volcano, asteroid, solar flare, you name it and there is a show about it. Some of these scenarios have been packaged into shows about how the Mayan Calendar "predicts" catastrophe in December of this year. I say so what? If something were to happen, we couldn't do anything about it, so why worry? Every day, we as human beings live with the risk of death by bus, car, gunshot, weather, etc. We should be living each and every day to its fullest and our fullest potential. Most importantly, the Mayan Calendar didn't predict any disaster, it just stopped. I have a pocket planner that I keep a running total of the contents of my checking account. I stop entering information when I get a few months ahead. Does that predict I won't have money then? No. I got tired of calculating that far in advance, or I hit a holiday/milestone, or sometimes, toward the end of the year, I run out of calendar space.
My own personal take on the Mayan Calendar situation is that the creators of the calendar were geeks who liked doing the calculations and were possibly fed up with leaders and others continually stopping by and wanting calendars at a moments notice. They found a big rock disk and decided to make a definitive public calendar that would fill the disk and allow them to have a day off once in a while. Maybe their intentions were to cover multiple disks (because it's what they do), but a lot more than expected fit on the disk and arms started to give out as they finished filling it, so it was decided that when they reached a significant stopping point they would stop. That stopping point was in 2012 AD, which coincidentally also filled the disk. Once the leaders found out that they now had a calendar that spanned thousands of years in the future and with other "things" becoming a priority, the calendar team was laid off or maybe conscripted to sacrifices or other community service.
So, let's all enjoy and do what we can to nurture 2012 and make it the best it can be--if all else fails, there is always 2013! Starting off 2012 with an enjoyable thing, it's time to announce the winner of the December contest!
Congratulations, Pamela S. of Alberta, Canada!
Pamela won Jude Alexander's Tarot Game with her correct guess of the Justice card from Ciro Marchetti's Tarot of Dreams. Be sure to enter this month's contest!