Like days and weeks and months, years too come and go, except, that these make us aware that we are getting older in age. That’s why it is traumatic for some to peel page from the calendar or replace a calendar with one with a larger year number.
We may picture the passage of time in spatial terms thus: A room which has the past within, while the space beyond is where all the future lies, with the entry door that separates the two.
In this metaphor, we open the door to another new year in our calendar reckoning of years. As a door has two faces, one looking in and the other out, so too this new month has two faces, one looking back into past-years, and the other facing the future that is yet to be born for us.
This is the significance of Janus: the two-faced God of ancient Romans, who is invoked as January in this, the first month of any year.
Indeed, Janus was the beginning of everything in the Roman world. the god of all entrances and exits. So all gates and doors were seen as holy.
We see here a deep insight into the nature of Time: Between has-been and yet-to-come is the winking present that alone is known perceived reality.
The Hindu world pictures this as Shiva’s third eye which transforms all to naught, as do all fleeting instants in the ceaseless stream of time.
Christ is sometimes described as pater futuri seculi: Father of ages unborn. In most traditions, as among ancient Romans, the year begins/began with the onset of spring. It was March, the month of sowing, which was the first of all the months, making – as their names still remind us – the months from September to December septem: seven to the decem: ten.
Though this is the time of the year when the earth is closest to the sun January First has absolutely no astronomical significance like solstice. The little Temple for Janus that Claudius Duilus had erected in 260 BCE in the Forum Olitorium is now buried alive only in obscure history pages. But his name is here to stay on the calendars of many peoples.
Who can tell what is in store in the years yet unborn? Possibilities are immense and always unpredictable for good and for bad: The discovery of sources of limitless non-polluting energy which could usher an age of prosperity; the rise to power of another maniac with nuclear power to threaten or unleash irrevocable devastation in the world.
Education and science could free more from ignorance and superstition, but scarce resources could deepen the chasm between haves and have-nots. Religious and racial bigotry could fire simmering suspicions into horrendous conflagrations, or perhaps an enlightened new outlook would foster harmony and peace among differing faiths and religious tenets. Or the checkered course of history could be snuffed into a mere glitch in the planet’s saga by the intrusion of an asteroid lured by earth’s gravity.
The flame of hope must be kept, whether with prayer or with wishes. But above all with our efforts we can snub feelings of bitterness, historical rancor, vengeance, and extend hands of friendship to those who come our way, and right the wrongs the best we can.
Spurts of Thought 