While you are reading all the “Happy New Year” text messages flooding your inbox, you suddenly hear the news about some predictions that the world will end on December 21, this year. The news sends shivers to your spine. You start to wonder if this year will still be a happy and awesome 2012. All the “what-ifs” just bombard you and ruin those happy thoughts. Doomsday, really?
Hey, relax. Chill. If it is true, then we still have more than 300 days to do what we want to do before the world gets devastated. That’s enough time to get crazy or to straighten up, to start a family, or file for a divorce, to get pregnant (and hopefully deliver a baby before December), to take classes or to stop going to a course you don’t really like, to travel and see the things you long to see, to let people know how they meant to you, and to do anything else to make the most out of your 2012, or say, before doomsday arrives.
Chill. Before you confine yourself to paranoia, let’s sort some info out and see if it is a Mayan prediction or just another doomsayers’ speculation. For the record, nothing was told about the Mayan’s prediction that the world will end on December 2012. Their Long Count calendar though, shows that it’s turning over for another 394-year “baktun” or cycle next year. The Mayans created the Long Count calendar, a numerically predictable calendar, which was set to begin in 3114 BC (according to our Modern Gregorian Calendar), and if calculated to the end of the cycle, it will be in 2012, specifically on December 21, the day of winter solstice for the Northern Hemisphere.
So the Mayans did not utter anything about world annihilation in 2012. They have nothing to do with the apocalyptic scenes of the fictional movie “2012”. You may still download an Iphone App for Mayan Calendar countdown, but who can say apocalypse shall happen on December 21, 2012?
If you still are overwhelmed with anxiety and paranoia for the “doomsday”, well, you might as well think that you have just been diagnosed with a terminal disease, and that you shall only have December this year, to live. Personally, I do not really see much difference between knowing when your life shall end, and when the world shall get devastated. Except for the latter which meant no one is going to mourn for your funeral, both situations send across the same message- death is an urgency. We all reach that point of souls separating from our bodies, or us, separating ourselves from the world.
The good thing here though is that we all still get the chance to face life with anxiety- anxiety in the sense that we get conscious enough to decide to make every minute memorable and significant to us. I remember my mom when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Everyday that she woke up alive was precious to her. She never failed to say “I love you” to the family. She spent more time to have fun and pampering- things she opted to sacrifice before, just to fulfill her role as a mother and wife. In a short span of time, she was able to do the things she wants without any fear or pessimism. We travelled to places she wanted to visit. She spent time for more coffee dates and shopping with me, ate anything that enticed her taste buds, and attempted to check off items in her short and simple bucket list. She lived her life without fear, as though everyday was her last. She died three months earlier than what was “medically predicted” about her case. Bud did she regret? I don’t think so. She made every moment count while she was alive, and that what really mattered most.
So, enough about apocalypse and death for 2012. We do not need all these hypes just to push us to live life the way we should live it- that is, with excitement in making the most of every moment while we are alive. Hence, we give 2012 another shot of hope. In 2012, dreams will be fulfilled and life will be more meaningful. If we just think that death has always been an urgency, regardless of all these predictions, and from there, we source out enough energy and drive to really live (not just survive!) each year that comes, there is really no reason to fear for what could happen in 2012. So let’s focus on “the now”, and wear the attitude of living as though everyday is our last (did I hear Steve Jobs utter these words in his speech in Stanford?). If the world has to end, we won’t have regrets left, for the right things we do to ourselves- happiness, freedom, sensibility, deep love for self and others- will already be worth a lifetime.
Stay hopeful for 2012. We are just starting the first of the 12 chapters of Book 2012. Let’s decide to make a happy story. Cheers everyone!
