Dreaming Our World

I’m writing this on the morning of February 29, something I could apparently only do once every four years or so. I was surprised to learn leap years are not regularly scheduled events. They’re mostly regularly scheduled. If a year is evenly divisible by four, like 2024, it’s a leap year. However, if a year is evenly divisible by 100, then it is not a leap year, no matter how much it wants to be. Except – except if a year is evenly divisible by 400, then it most definitely is a leaper. Got it?

I suppose, having now gone through all this, that regularity is in the eye of the beholder. For me, it’s a question of how much math is required, and the calculations needed to keep the Gregorian calendar lined up with the rotation of the earth and sun is too much – which is to say I’m going to forget the part about a year being evenly divisible by 400. Though, having written this, I can feel that fact embedding itself in my memory. So, I don’t know what I believe any more.

The sun, if she had an opinion, would probably think we’re all nuts. The earth would likely concur. I wouldn’t disagree with them, except to point out that we – humans, that is – have a much different relationship to time than they do. In the grand scheme, we don’t get much of it to scramble around on the surface of one while being warmed by the other. There’s a lot we want to get done. We don’t exactly know why, except that we know we must, and that’s reason enough. The sun yawns, meanwhile, and three generations have come and gone, taking with them all their industry and effort.

This used to freak me out a little when I was a young man. I knew I liked doing things, writing and creating things, that that’s where the fun was, but I could sense the impermanence of it all. Leap years somehow only reinforced this, the absurdity of the notion that we got an extra day. We got nothing! Why, it’s all made up, this calendar, these names of months and years, these countries and cities and languages. It’s as if we live in our imaginations, dreaming our world as we go – which, I have come to understand, is exactly how it’s all meant to be.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com