Humans have a perplexing habit to indulge in lengthy festivities on randomly selected yet firmly established chronological points. For instance, I am just coming back from one such celebration that I chose to experience as a neon sign in a large urban settlement called New York City. What I observed was a curious random movement of crowds on the street below. The humans that comprised the crowd seemed to be doing exactly what they would be doing at any other time, such as walking, eating and shopping, only at a much more intensified rate.
This particular holiday celebrates the arbitrarily selected date of January, the 1st as the beginning of each new year. There are other such dates, honoured by other groups of earthlings, that don't necessarily coincide with each other but exhibit the same rationale - that time is a linear progression of repetitive units that have clearly defined beginnings and ends. It is difficult to grasp the logic that supports such an extravagant choice as the 1st of January. 1 is called a number - a symbol that indicates the beginning of a sequence broken down into equal units, and named by virtue of their placement. The dominant numerical system goes like this - 1 (one), 2 (two), 3 (three), 4 (four), 5 (five), 6 (six), 7 (seven), 8 (eight), 9 (nine), 10 (ten), and then builds on the 10: 11, 12, 13, etc. This is one of the ways they break down information into manageable units (oh, the perils of language-based knowledge). January is one of 12 months that conventionally constitute one year by most human cultural standards. The year is an obvious conventional choice as it constitutes one full revolution of the Earth around the Sun, but the seeming randomness of January 1st is still a mystery to me... No matter what the humans say in their convoluted "language"...
