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The coming of the year 2000 A.D. gives us a chance to look at the continuum of time and assess how far we have come and try to predict where we will be going. For massage therapists such perspectives will be presented in the special Millennium issue of Massage Therapy Journal, which will be published in mid-December. Since that issue will not carry a Letter from the Editor, I here openly muse about time in this issue, the first AMTA publication to carry the year 2000 on its cover. Just before mid-twentieth century--pretelevision--newsreels brought images of the latest world events and newsmakers to movie-theater audiences. Time magazine's The March of Time was a movie newsmagazine that always ended with the ponderous pun, "Time marches on!" In many ways, time does march lockstep, like military platoons moving at the same speed. But that is a metaphor to help us mortals grasp the concept. Time is not tangible, but it is there. Benjamin Franklin defined time both as money (1748) and as "the stuff life is made of," warning, "You may delay, but time will not." (1758) In the twentieth century, Albert Einstein defined time as the fourth dimension, after width, depth, and height. I wonder at what age Einstein began to think about time. I am fascinated to observe how little that time affects my small grandchildren. They are still too young to measure time with their minds, the clock, or the calendar. Considering the calendar of my life, I have just realized that I will soon have touched, if indirectly, three centuries, as follows: my grandparents were born in the nineteenth century; I was born in the twentieth century; and, with luck, my newest grandchild (still in utero) will be born in the twenty-first century. Before we look ahead to the twenty-first century and the third millennium A.D., we should cast a backward glance at the previous turn-of-the-millennium. Consider the following. In those Dark Ages, Constantinople, with a population exceeding a million, was the crossroads of the world. A revolutionary new writing product from China, called paper, was just introduced. Viking Leif Eriksson just reached North America, perhaps the first European to do so. Hearing, upon his return, of the mighty forests of the New World, his sister planned to import its lumber to Scandinavia. Some of those whom we now call Native Americans reportedly greeted Eriksson upon his landing. Living on this continent, in plains, forests, mountains, deserts, tundra, and along the coasts, their population was measured in thousands. Today, a thousand years later, the population only of the United States of America is approaching three hundred million--about the same as the total human population of the planet earth in 1000 A.D. Consider also that this is the Christian Millennium, since throughout Western Civilization years have been categorized as A.D. (anno Domini, which is Latin for "year of the Lord," the Lord being Jesus Christ.) Most Christians today follow the Gregorian calendar, devised by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 A.D. However, Eastern Orthodox churches follow the Julian calendar, authorized by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. (before Christ), which currently is running 13 days later than the Gregorian calendar. Other religions not celebrating the new millennium on January 1, 2000, are the Muslims who are in the year 1420; Jews, 5760; Sikhs, 301; Hindus, 1921. Also the Chinese, who are in the year 4697 and will celebrate their next new year in February and will have only 2 years to go for their new century. In any case, purists say that the Third Millennium will begin on January 1, 2001, since the year 2000 is the last of the twentieth century. These facts are by way of preparing you for the next millennium and hoping that you enjoy not only this issue but also the next, special, issue of our publication. There are those who say that this year's horrendous hurricanes and disastrous earthquakes foreshadow what will occur next year, in the new millennium. Others see the new millennium as an age of light, grace, progress, love, and peace. More likely, to most of us, January 2, 2000 will be like every other day after New Year's that we have lived through. As by Walt Whitman said (1856): "The future is no more uncertain than the present." Theodore Berland, Editor |
