Happy New Year

We discovered it when I went to the first grade in public school. I couldn’t read the blackboard clearly from the back of he classroom. My folks took me to the ophthalmologist and sure enough I needed to wear glasses. It wasn’t a huge surprise. My mother wore glasses. My sister wore glasses. I had an aunt who had been one of the first people to wear contact lenses and was under the care of specialists at a Chicago research hospital. There were quite a few people in my world who wore glasses. My father, however, did not. He was able to wear eyeglasses and to have a class 1 medical certificate to the age of 50. Even then he was only slightly farsighted. He maintained his ability to see clearly until a brain tumor began to cause vision problems near the end of his life.

So I have known for a long time that 20/20 is the term that is used to describe clear vision. I was a bit of a problem for my parents when it came to glasses. I broke a lot of frames. I learned to repair glasses with tape, band-aids or whatever was available. We even learned a bit of early plastic welding, with heat applied from the kitchen stove to make some repairs. I seemed to be unable to make a pair of glasses last a whole year. One pair was lost in the river when I fell. We offered a reward of a new fishing pole to whoever could find the glasses. My family members and friends all spent a lot of time that summer wearing goggles or facemarks and looking into the river. When the glasses were finally found, they were nearly a half block from where they fell into the river and the lenses were so scratched that they were not any good at all. They did, however, provide a pair of back-up frames for the replacement glasses that I had been wearing for some time.

When I was 15 I had my first flight physical, preparing to solo in the airplane. The doctor ended up putting 20/200 on the form and checked a box stating that the bearer of the certificate must wear corrective lenses and have a spare pair of corrective lenses available whenever operating a private aircraft. I was proud of my class 3 medical certificate, but I also knew that I wouldn’t ever earn a class 1 certificate. A couple of years later that fact translated in a “you need not apply” for the smokejumper program. Apparently when you are parachuting onto a burning hillside, you can’t risk having your glasses snatched away by tree branches.

So, it seems like a kind of symbolic event to have reached 2020. I’ve thought of it for a long time as a year of clear vision. I don’t think that I have attached too much significance to the year. Earlier in my career, I identified 2023 as a possible year for retirement, so I wasn’t thinking at that time that there would be special significance to 2020. However, as things have turned out, we will be making a big job change midway through 2020, so it is a year of vision for us.

Vision, of course, does not refer only to optical clarity. The dictionary also speaks of what is seen in a dream, trance or ecstasy. The third definition is “the act or power of imagination.” So if I am making the connection between the year and vision, it might be good to include the concept of imagination.

I think that in all of the definitions, 2020 will be a year of vision for us. We will develop a clearer image of what the next phase of our life will be like. We will employ our imaginations to envision new ways of thinking and living.

Of course, there is nothing particularly special about the year 2020, when one considers the vast sweep of history. Even if one only considers human history, 2020 is nothing spectacular. The earliest fossils of humans who are anatomically similar to us are about 200,000 years old. Humans have been around for enough years to make a couple of thousand quite insignificant. 2020 is maybe 1 percent of human experience.

And we don’t all cost the years in the same way. According to the Hebrew calendar, the year is 5780. That places Jesus’ birth around the year 3760. We come from people whose memories stretch back a long ways and our Bible contains stories that our people had been telling for millennia before Jesus was born. The new year in the Hebrew calendar comes in September on our Gregorian calendar. Actually, there are four new years celebrations each year in the Hebrew Calendar (though only one advances the count). One of the new years’ is the new year for trees. The one in September, or Tishri on the Hebrew calendar is said to be the anniversary of the creation of the universe. The Hebrew calendar is called lunisolar, which means it is based on the phases of the moon, but corrected to the seasons of the year. It uses a complex system of leap months to keep the new year at roughly the same season each year.

The Chinese calendar is also lunisolar, but the date of the beginning of the year doesn’t line up precisely with any fixed point on the Gregorian calendar. This year the Chinese new year will be January 25 on the Gregorian calendar. Each new year is named after one of 12 zodiac animals. Each animal plays an important part in Chinese culture. The year coming will be known as the year of the rat. The count of years isn’t as important in Chinese culture as the animals, but the year to come is 4718. In Korea, they follow the Chinese calendar, but also celebrate the Gregorian new year as “new new year.”

In India, there are a wide variety of different new year’s celebrations. Hindus in different parts of the country employ different calendars to mark the year. The Tamil calendar marks new years on April 14 on the Gregorian calendar. That calendar has a 60-year cycle. The years don’t have numbers, but names. The next year will be Saarvari.

In the Islamic calendar, the year is 1441, which began in August. The count of years dates back from when the prophet Mohammad moved from Mecca to Medina. The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar so the celebration of festivals moves around the Gregorian calendar.

For Iranians, it is the year 1398 and new years is celebrated on the vernal equinox. It is a completely solar calendar. The celebration is over 3,000 years old.

So i may or may not be 202, but wherever you are and however you count, I hope the year to come will be one of renewed vision. Our world can use some clear vision.

Copyright (c) 2020 by Ted E. Huffman. I wrote this. If you would like to share it, please direct your friends to my web site. If you'd like permission to copy, please send me an email. Thanks!

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