Unfinished Business (and season’s greetings!)

It’s around 200AD. Picture the exhausted Mayan calendar-maker’s apprentice: hands, fingers and concentration exhausted from chipping away at hard rock, while the winter solstice party season is fast approaching.

As she applies the finishing touches to the latest section of the great calendar, she glances across to the red sunset, catches the unmistakeable aromas of roast armadillo, guacamole and mulled tequila, and murmers:

“Enough! The next b’ha’tun* is just going to have to wait until next week – surely 1800-odd haab’* into the future is OK for now! Who’s going to be around then anyway?!”

Little does she know that the whole calendar-making department is going to be made redundant (and ritually sacrificed) immediately after the solstice celebrations due to the ongoing Mayan government cost-cutting exercise. Nor that, in December 2012, some folk might interpret this interrupted ‘end’ of the calendar as signalling the end of days!

And so to today. As we hurry around ticking off our ‘things to do’ before the Xmas holiday, there’s bound to be plenty of unfinished business left over for the New Year.

The world isn’t going to end on Friday, so we can prepare for a holiday – I hope yours is merry and warm in the company of your loved ones.

And we can plan ahead too. As life carries on into 2013, what would you like to have happen? How will you choose to be, and to what do you need to pay attention to help make that happen?

Humanity has plenty of unfinished business – let’s all play our part in making the next b’ha’tun a good one!

With very best wishes and thanks for your friendship, collaboration, business, time and support over the last year,

Adrian

 

* B’ha’tun = c.394 years       Haab’ = 1 year      (source Wikipedia)

 

We’re all doomed. Happy Xmas!

A terrible economic recession (depression?) seems inevitable over the next few years as Western economies crumble under the burden of unsustainable debt, and the rest of the world catches the cold of falling trade and GDP.

The emperor’s clothes of ever-increasing ‘leverage’ over recent decades will be seen for what they are: an illusion of riches and consumerism, inflated asset values and personal and government spending powers utterly divorced from intrinsic wealth.

In other words, the biggest bubble ever. There’s nothing we as individuals can do about all of that: ‘austerity’ will be with us perhaps for many years.

But we will prevail. There is everything we can do about ourselves, our choices and how we connect with the abundance of human creativity, hope and love.

Currency, borrowing and GDP may be seen as the arbitrary constructs of a system that works most of the time to provide structure and mechanism for an organised society to function: enabling trade, sufficiency and employment.

But as they temporarily fail us, what we may rediscover underneath is a more durable and fundamental aspect of humanity and community.

Consider for a moment: there is so much we can be thankful for if we pay more attention – family, community and friendship, memories, creativity and innovation, discourse and enlightenment, organisational achievement, the limitlessness of the Universe and, most powerful of all, love. And most of us are lucky enough to live in safety, peace and a good environment.

We could choose to focus on the economic gloom and erosion of material wealth – and yes, there are people suffering in this world.

And we can also choose to focus our attention on the relationships which don’t need cash to make life meaningful and happy.

With thanks for your friendship and very best wishes for a happy and loving Christmas holiday and a New Year full of choices.

Adrian