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04 January 2012
If you believe that the end of the world will occur this year, I have some questions for you.
First: Did you make any New Year’s resolutions and if so, what are they?
Wait, I don’t know if I want the answer to that because it’s going to make my resolutions look really lame. If you think that you only have 12 months to live, you’re going to run up your MasterCard traveling the world eating and living with Kardashian abandon or get all pious and abandon all your material belongings and bathing habits while praying for our salvation.
Me, I’ve resolved to stretch in the morning. Daily.*
Before I launch into the next question, let me explain the Maya/Mayan Prophecy: A calendar drawn up by the people who made the funky-looking pyramids in Mexico and Central America supposedly predicted that the world would explode, implode, and then simply “plode” in a spectacular array of catastrophic events on December 21, 2012. Their civilization existed from 250 A.D. to 900 A.D. – long before the current “App” period – but nonetheless are renowned for their astronomical insight. The Maya correctly figured out that Earth wobbles on its axis as it spins and once about every 25,800 years or so, the sun aligns with the center of the Milky Way galaxy on winter solstice. If the Maya Prophecy is right, December 21 will be the shortest day of the year but feel like the longest for astronomists and Mayans who will spend every waking minute explaining and assuring the media that the Mayans never said the world would end December 21, 2012 – they just said it’s a time when the universe will rebalance itself, that’s all. This is all based on an iStone tablet that said a Mayan god will rise on December 21, 2012. The rest of it says, “…or maybe not” for all we know because it’s cracked and illegible.
But who are you going to believe, a bunch of Mayans and scientists or Britney Spears and Woody Harrelson, who are among the many celebrity believers in the doomsday prophecy, according to December212012.com, “the official site” of … freaking out about December 21, 2012.
Will it be a good year to try yoga and assemble an emergency kit for your car and home?
Heck ya!
But 2011 was a good year to do that, too. So were all the years before that and the years to come, too.
Would it be a good idea to live 2012 like it’s your last year on the planet?
You betcha! Ask that person out, write that novel, compete in that race, go for that dream job, travel to that place you’ve always wanted to visit, be kinder to your neighbors, friends, family and self, treat yourself every now and then but whatever you do, don’t go overboard because it’s not wise to spend your last days feeling like a bloated sea cow dressed in your elastic pair of “cookie pants.”
*Realistically, I’m aiming to stretch 3-4 days a week. I added “daily” to make it look more impressive but like the Mayan Prophecy, that ain’t gonna happen.
