Today just might go down in history as the single most historically recognized presumed Doomsday assumed, to date. I recognize that is quite the mouthful, but consider this: It seems more people were focused on this day, this day marking the last day of the Mayan calendar (and I will never figure out why those bloodthirsty creeps got this much attention) as the day the world would end, than just about any other.
Someday, they'll look back at us and just shake their heads in wonder and bemusement.
Of course, other prophecies garner just as must attention or more, but this particular day was brought down to one specific day, while Revelations and Nostradamus aren't so ambitious. It just seems that people thrive on such tragic thoughts; so much so that numerous people wrote and published books about this one day.
Many people have looked at the moment as the opportunity to recognize our borrowed time in order to exercise free will and that, yes, we can be the architects of our future and make some grand changes. This date can act as a grand Pygmalion Effect; stating we can see that this is not our last day on Earth and that, yes, we can change for a better tomorrow.
Some have assumed the world will not end, but this will be the end of an era and another era will begin. Okay...but that seems cheap because anyone can say the future begins right at the moment when the past becomes so. But then, why not make it so?
This is a day when you can make a new change and decide that, from here forward, you will no longer be who you were yesterday. Many of us do this when the turn of the year comes, and we all make our New Year's Resolutions. But we all know the next year will come, so we push off those resolutions to the next year. I will quit smoking next year. I will stop this or that, or start this or that, next year.
But we do not have but one era per lifetime to act upon. This is much akin to seeing Halley's Comet. Unless you're really lucky, you'll likely only see that once, if at all. It only comes around once every 76 years or so. But this era thing apparently only comes around every 3,500 years or whatever those Mayans made this out to be. Maybe it's 2,400 years or 10,873 years. Whatever it is, most people will never see the change of an era in their lifetime.
We, for whatever reason, have this advantage.
Today, according to somebody, is the end of one era and the start of another. While this doesn't have to be the actual case, we can exert the free will and state it is, at least for ourselves. We can enact our own Pygmalion Effect.
What is that, you ask? The Pygmalion Effect is a rather verbose way of referring to a self-fulfilling prophecy. State a brand new and as yet unseen TV show is going to be a smash hit and it just might be. Convince the planet's most sentient species that political leaders must never be accountable for what they do or don't do, and you have the state of politics you have today. So, convince yourself simply through the personal goal that today marks your new era, and it just very well could be.
Today is a brand new day and the hope for a brand new tomorrow. Will tomorrow demonstrate the same old you, or your effort to make a better you?
I think I would like to start off, from right now, with a new and improved me. How about you?
But...what do I do now?
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