reflections and the arbitrariness of time
A few weeks ago, I wrote about encounters with old files and some reflections that arose from those encounters, including the impetus to finish some of these old projects.
As though the universe is making sure that I understand the message, I am experiencing an interesting confluence, with the near simultaneous end of two unconnected cycles: one is the calendar (Gregorian) year and the other is reaching the end of the current volume of my journal.
The end of the calendar year is by its nature of time of reflection; we look back over the year that’s coming to its end and we look forward into the year that is at its beginning.
The reason I mention in the title the arbitrariness of time, is that tying this reflection to the Gregorian year is somewhat arbitrary. The calendar cycle is natural, considering the motion of the Earth around the Sun, but there is no reason that reflection in the midst of the (northern hemisphere) winter is more natural than reflection in the middle of our summer.
Beyond this, we as humans have multiple different calendar years, beyond the Gregorian year is which natural to me solely I think due to its familiarity. It is the calendar I have always known.
Beyond the Gregorian year, which is the year just coming to its end, I also have the academic year, which in England runs from late September through June. Others have different academic years, and we each have our rituals of reflection at the ends of those years.
Though it is not tied to calendar or academic years, another cycle in my life is my journal cycle. I keep a daily journal and have for more than 22 years now. The gathering of ideas as one journal comes to an end and the planning of things to do in the next journal cycle, is another one of these moments for reflection.
Each of these cycles is at its core arbitrary and each of them provokes the same question: why wait until the end of the year, the end of the cycle, to start the work of the next cycle. Why not start today?
And this is what the universe seems to be saying to me, and this is the voice I find myself listening to.
multijimbo 
Yes. “If not us, who? If not now, when?” Also Goethe: “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.”