Jottings - Slice of life - 439 ( The year 2020 for me - part 4 - the conclusion) A calendar year is only an agreed-upon convention for measuring time, as much as the lines of longitude and latitude are only imaginary lines around the earth. There is no intrinsic reality to any of them. Nothing changes tonight at 12:00 PM. The Earth is not going to pause for a few minutes, take a bow, and tremblingly announce across the galaxies that a new year has begun on a blue ( Carl Sagan’s description of the Earth)dot in the cosmos. No! It will simply move on. It is a uniquely human trait to measure time chronologically. All other species live by the natural rhythms of nature, except Man. To us, the ticking of the clock, and the shifting days on the calendar — are more real than ourselves. In 1752, when England decided to finally switch from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian, Englishmen had to “lose” twelve days to synchronize the calendar with the Gregorian calendar — which meant that