Wrote this on my birthday
Birthdays - A day taken out of each year to celebrate a person's life, which is most suitable on the anniversary of their birth. Do we talk about their individual accomplishments they've made in the previous year? The accomplishments they've made over their lifetime? Because it would seem redundant to always bring up the same accomplishment, but then again, it might be so great it needs to be mentioned constantly. Why do we talk about "the new year" like it's a life-changing event? A fresh start? A change to begin the new us with a bunch of resolutions. Though, if we know there are flaws in our character, like eating too much, not exercising enough, why do we wait until the beginning of the calendar year and not as soon as they are realized? Does this combination of a new day, month, and year create an emergent property that enables us to have more willpower than we did on the previous day? It would seem to me that years (and really all concepts of time) are meant to serve our organizational natures when categorizing past events. But imagine if, for whatever reason, there was no calendar year, just an infinite calendar that simple goes onto the next day. Would we then begin to celebrate months? Weeks? Should I simply feel good about the things I've done since I got up this morning?
The whole notion of days seem strange, as what is "day" to an owl is very different than what is day to a chicken. Just as I used to be at Denny's until all hours of the night and then sleep in until 1 pm the next day, so does the farmer get up at 5 to do their chores and go to bed early the night before. Why are we governed by lightness and darkness? If we lived so close to the sun that we had no concepts of day or night, would we feel the same about our measurements of time as we do now? Or those who live without more than one season (which then, I suppose, wouldn't be a season at all, but rather a climatic disposition). Night and Day. The Four Seasons. Perhaps I don't understand enough math to properly address these questions.
The whole notion of days seem strange, as what is "day" to an owl is very different than what is day to a chicken. Just as I used to be at Denny's until all hours of the night and then sleep in until 1 pm the next day, so does the farmer get up at 5 to do their chores and go to bed early the night before. Why are we governed by lightness and darkness? If we lived so close to the sun that we had no concepts of day or night, would we feel the same about our measurements of time as we do now? Or those who live without more than one season (which then, I suppose, wouldn't be a season at all, but rather a climatic disposition). Night and Day. The Four Seasons. Perhaps I don't understand enough math to properly address these questions.