Time After Sometime

On the brink of another year, we are often bombarded with all the wishy-washy resolutions, recommendations and inescapable avalanche of hopefulness. We are often socially cornered into reciprocating greetings that are founded on nothing but the governing rules of planet rotation in a vast universe where what you wish for and what could happen are totally independent.
So why do we indulge in such self-deluding practices in spite of the accumulated payload of broken resolutions, unfulfilled wishes and thankless self-investments in misguided endeavors?

The long answer would involve diving into the history of civilization, the local customs of ethnic groups and the anchored superstitious beliefs handed over from one generation to another.

The short one is that we are afraid.

Time being the only irrecoverable and irreplaceable commodity during our limited existence, we try to bend it and wield its unstoppable progress by putting roadblocks in its way. We plan for that diet to start on Monday, we get that 6 months gym subscription, we prepare that 3  year business plan, we celebrate anniversaries for our relationships and offspring and magically expect that when a number on the calendar changes, it will divert the path of events previously set in motion by all the choices we made before.

Although my rambling here might make me sound like a Bond villain whose world domination goal is wreak havoc in the world by destroying all the clocks and calendars, I am not.
I am quite the opposite actually, a very precise, time-efficient professional (heck, I've even been recently reproached that I am not a team player when it comes to coming in late and dragging my feet all day to be in sync with the others after hours).

The finer point I am trying to make is that, although we need our lives to be regulated by a quantified notion of time, we should not rely on these quantifications to auspiciously or ominously bring about change. So on this last day of the year, I'll gladly take your wishes for a happy 2016 and will reciprocate them with goodwill, but deep down inside (and a bit at the corner of my mouth) I will be saying that it doesn't really matter what you or I wish.  Things will happen and we'll have to deal with them as they do. After all, like Omar Al Khayyam once said:

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”