For those who want to know, which may not be very many people, I did have a good time at the Polar Bear Plunge yesterday. The day was mostly gray and chilly, but the sun broke through the clouds for long enough to give us a pretty good window for the annual dip in the ocean. The crowds were pretty big, but we found a place at the edge where there was plenty of room and in we went. The event was Birch Bay’s 42nd annual, and my 2nd. All I need to do, going forward, is to subtract 40 from the year to get the number in which I have participated. A bit of math marks 2048 as the year when I might make my 25th annual plunge in the year of the 65th annual event. If I succeed, I’ll be 94, which is probably old enough to get some attention. As it is right now, there seem to be a lot of old guys who are eager to take the plunge, which is probably a good thing because although I don’t look any too good in a swimming suit, there were definitely a few at the beach yesterday who were doing their neighbors no favors by going shirtless. Although there was little risk of sunburn yesterday, I always wear a swim top these days, so perhaps was a bit less likely to leave children with traumatic memories. In addition, I dove right into the water instead of wading in slowly, which meant I got in and out fairly quickly with little fuss. This year I paid a bit more and got a sweatshirt instead of a t shirt, so was able to warm up in style.
When I think back, I don’t have distinct memories of very many New Year’s celebrations. I seem to have clearer memories of other events that have marked the passage of years. I do remember 2000, when there was concern about the effect of the Y2K computer programming issue. It turned out not to be a major disrupter. And we learned a bit about database file organization. My collection of journal entries is encoded in such a fashion that it won’t be a problem. Of course the change of a millennia doesn’t come around all that often. I’m pretty sure that by the year 3000 my journal entries won’t be an issue for anyone.
While there are many animals that have a sense of memory, we humans seem to be unique in our sense of the flow of time. It is hard to know for certain, but we seem to be the only creatures that has come up with a system of counting years. Our system evolved over many different generations and understandings of the nature of time. When you think about it, it is a rather convoluted system. We determine the length of a year by the earth’s position relative to the sun. Then we divide the year into 12 months of unequal length. We divide months into weeks, but the number of weeks in a month varies. the weeks are all divided into seven days, a practice that reflects one of the stories of creation in the Bible. Days have 24 hours, a rather odd number, considering the possibilities of having a different system. Once we get to hours, the system gets even more convoluted. There are 60 minutes in an hour, and sixty seconds in a minute, but then we go digital with milliseconds. If we had started at scratch to devise a system, it seems nearly impossible that we would have ended up with the system we have. However, people didn’t start all at once in terms of measuring time. Because of regular events such as sunrise, sunset, and high noon, the concept of a day is pretty universal.
Different cultures have different ways of counting years. The dominant system in our part of the world is to count birthdays. The day on which a person is born is remembered and we add a year to the count each time that day comes around on the calendar. But our system isn’t the only one. In parts of south Asia, for example, the tradition is to call an infant year old at birth and to count up from that point. In several different indigenous tribes of North America the tradition was not to make a big ceremony of the day of birth. Often it was not remembered. Instead people counted the number of winters survived to come up with an age that is roughly comparable to the birthday system.
I don’t know if our way of counting time gives us a different sense of the future than other creatures experience, but it seems like it might. Because we have become accustomed to counting years and giving each year a number, it is simple to project into the future. I can imagine a certain number of years of swimming in the ocean on New Year’s Day long before that number of years has passed. And yet everything about the future is speculation to a certain extent. We know that all humans are mortal and that each of us will die, but we do not know when that will occur. Imagining myself at the age of 94 or any other number is pure imagination. I have no idea how old I will be when the last year of my life comes.
From my current perspective, reaching 2026 and even 2030 seem like pretty good possibilities. And, in a way, it might be a positive thing to think of myself at 94. That doesn’t make my current age seem like such a big number. Perhaps I am not as much of an old man as I think. After all, I seemed to have an easier time swimming in the bay yesterday than some people who appeared to be younger than I.
Whether or not I remember it years from now, We’ve gotten 2025 off to a start. I don’t write many checks, so don’t have as many opportunities to make a mistake with the date as was the possibility years ago. I’m interested to see how the year goes and what is in store in the years to come.
