And A Happy New Year

I had an English teacher in High School who came to the field late in her career; when I asked her why she switched, she said the corporate world is a never-ending slog of interrelated projects continually blurring into each other. Teaching offered definite starts and ends, beginnings and conclusions, finishes and renewals.

Now, one might then argue that a problem with our educational system is that it doesn't prepare our students for the "real" world, where none such regular breaks exist--but which real world, I might ask?

For I argue that it's our modern-world's state of constant indeterminate-ism that is artificial and unreal; the Natural World, by contrast, is a series of cycles, turns of seasons, Springs and Winters, blossoms and falling leaves, equinoxes and solstices, births, deaths, and rotations around the sun. The Natural World itself is a world of definite starts and ends, beginnings and conclusions, finishes and renewals. We humans be the only ones concerned with constructing static, artificial realms of never-ending slogs.

Farmers, the ones who actually feed us and maintain our existence, are constantly in tune with this cycle of stages--and our present education system was originally a-tuned to the farmers. If we consider such a world unrealistic, well, perhaps that's because we are so unnatural.

All this is just a round-about way of saying Happy New Year--for the passing of a New Year is otherwise an utterly arbitrary thing, right? The Chinese, the Jews, many cultures, have different random New Year starting points, none more valid than any other. Jan 1 2012 is, functionally, no different from Dec 31 2011.

Yet though our new-year assignations are arbitrary, the spirit of it is wholly appropriate and natural--for we've created a clear break, a new beginning, a fresh start. We are conforming to the pattern of nature. We have chosen to renew--even if it's only a renewal of calenders, that's at least something.

Happy New Years.