Happy New Year! I hope you all had an amazing break and are replenished for the new quarter. Can you believe it is already 2012? It seems like just yesterday everyone was freaking out that that we were entering the new millennium. But just like when we stepped into the 2000s, this specific year is also especially unique due to the huge myth that is associated with it.
Myth:
The world is going to end December 21, 2012.
Reality:
I know what you’re all saying, “No it is going to end! Didn’t you see that movie? Didn’t you hear that crazy drunk guy with the foil hat on the corner of the street yelling about it? It’s going to happen!”
No its not.
Stop trying to cross everything off your bucket list or plan a bank robbery just because you think the world will end and it won’t matter if you get caught. It will matter and you will look like an idiot.
Monstrous floods, gigantic Earth destroying meteors and being burnt to a crisp by the Sun is not in our future, at least near future anyway.
So where did this outrageous rumor come from? For one reason, blame the deceased Mayans.
Some believe the world is going to end because the Mayan calendar ends on that exact date, but what people really need to understand is how the Mayan calendar works.
The calendar is like a cycle with 1,872,000 days or 5,125.37 years in each one and when one ends, another cycle begins.
Quoted in the National Geographic, Anthony Aveni, author of The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012, explains how the idea of the calendar is that “time gets renewed, the that the world gets renewed all over again – often after a period of stress – the same way we renew time on New Year’s Day.” It is like a “rebirth period,” to make new changes in your life for the better.
For the Maya, that stress period is occurring right now and has been for thousands of years. The current calendar that is ending soon is “the Long Count” calendar which is a length circular calendar that engraves the Maya culture since the beginning. The end of this era is December 21, 2012 which they named Day Zero but not because the world was going to end but because that calendar was and a new one was going to begin.
Unfortunately, the Mayan empire was destroyed before a new calendar was created, leaving civilization in complete unnecessary terror.
So you can stop freaking out and planning your good byes, I promise, we will all be here for a very long time.
I hope this calmed your nerves so you can go forward in the New Year with a positive outlook and without worry!