ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR III
In five hundred, twenty five thousand,
six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in a life?
-Jonathan Larson Seasons of Love
The year in minutes is exactly five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred, the musical Rent is one of the longest in Broadway. It is a Pulitzer Prize winning play that centers on gentrification, poverty and addiction and a lot of other things including AIDS. It features Seasons of Love as the main theme song.
Although the context is on how one will measure a year, the whole thing is not grounded simply on the events unfolding but the measure of life and the whole gamut and scale of the season.
In my line of work as a Teacher, a year is not only a measure of the days but an encapsulated reality. It’s a degree or yet another try at it, it may be another chance to pass the subject or a shot to make life better, time is vital.
It’s a very important measure.
Consider the consequences of losing time: Consider how you would feel if you missed the bus, or if you were waiting to meet a loved one.
Realize that time is limited: Time is a valuable resource that can’t be replaced or replenished. Consider the impact of time on your life: Time affects everything you do, from the growth of a flower to the destruction of empires.
Philosophically, we can look for ideas on time and we can find several things. One of these would be Fatalism Fatalism can be understood as the doctrine that whatever will happen in the future is already unavoidable (where to say that an event is unavoidable is to say that no agent is able to prevent it from occurring). But for me, the future is not yet written, it’s a thing not yet final and that the year ahead and in front is not yet certain, it’s something we have to live and act on.
And that the future is not yet made. An old song Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans released in 1956, this used to be a lullaby of sort being sung by my mother to put me to sleep . And more than that, the song was an antidote for my fear that, the future is already made. And that as every New Year unfolds, I remind myself that In five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes we can still make things right and live a year that we can create.
The year ahead is what we make it. We have not yet created the New Year; it is still up to us.
