Where Were You Dec. 21?

Being a seer is a pretty cushy occupation. One of my old college buddies, Jim McCurdy, after trying business courses with moderate success decided to study meteorology. Shortly after his graduation, he landed a weather forecaster job at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Jim said it was the best job in the world. He couldn’t fail.

“When our predictions don’t work out quite right, we just say some highly unusual pattern developed at the last minute,” McCurdy said. “Everybody knows the weather is fickle, so nobody puts any blame on us.”

Something like that happened in many places Dec. 21, as we awaited the end of the world or the start of a new Mayan calendar cycle, depending on whose tea leaves you were reading. A convention center near Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza on Mexico’s Yucatan Penninsula was popular.

About a thousand shamans, seers, stargazers, yogis, sufis, and swamis gathered to participate with self-appointed leader Alberto Arribalzaga in experiencing spirals of light entering their heads. This phenomenon was expected to “generate powerful vortexes that cover the planet.” 

We’ve been to Chichen Itza. I was not terribly impressed, so it was easy to resist any impulse to go there to celebrate either the end of the world or the launching of a new one. As it turned out, being there could be dangerous. The guardian of the “sacred flame” burned a finger handling the kindling wood. He later had to scoop up a burning log that was knocked out of the brazier and threatened to start a blaze that might have destroyed the wooden stage.

Many celebrants from distant places raised their arms high toward the sun after it ushered in “cosmic dawn.” Unfortunately, those with fair skin suffered painful sunburns for their trouble, a fate that could have befallen me had I made the pilgrimage to the Yucatan.

These reports made me feel good about my decision to stay home. Seeking to bolster my confidence that the world was not going to end, I spent part of the day performing pelvic muscle contractions, an exercise that can improve one’s bladder control. I believed that would do more good for the world, at least my immediate world, than anything I could have accomplished in Mexico.

Meanwhile the good mystics at Chichen Itza settled down once they realized apocalypse was not going to be now and proclaimed on Dec. 22 the start of a new era. Celebrants said they had witnessed the “birth of a new and better age.”

If that turns out to be true, I promise to hurry off to Chichen Itza and hug every Mayan I can find, but only after applying generous amounts of sun screen. We might have to wait another 5,000 or so years for the Mayan New Age to fully develop, so for now let's just wish each other a Happy New Year.