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Having grown up in the wake of the Cold War, the Reagan-Qaddafi nuclear stand off and the very first mention of climate change, I had always been afraid of the end of the world.  I even went so far as to write an article for our school newspaper about my opposition to nuclear war.  And it seems that I am not the only one who has had an obsession with Armageddon.  I can’t vouch for other religions, but I know that the bible is rife with stories of the end of the world, from the first book, Genesis, and its story of Noah and the flood, to Jesus’ preachings, to the last book, Revelations, and the Riders of the Apocalypse.     Then there’s Nostradamus with his ever so rosy accounts of doomsday, especially in the recently found “Lost Books”.   And as most of us are well aware (I would say ALL of us), according to the Mayan calendar, 21.12.2012, today, should be the last day of the world.

But as I said, I had always been afraid of the end of the world.  But I now ask myself – what does the end of the world actually mean?  Many biblical scholars have argued that the Book of Revelations for example is not “a roadmap for the future…instead, scholars understand that Revelation originally spoke to the conditions of its own time and place….We best understand Revelation when we read it like any other ancient text, in its own historical and cultural context.”  I think the same could be said of the Mayan calendar.  And Nostradamus’ predictions are up for argument and can be read and interpreted in any way the reader wants, most especially in hindsight…

Nowadays, I feel that the end of the world is not such a bad thing and it is not about the physical end of planet Earth or the like.  I think it’s about ends in our own little worlds, our own micro-cosmoses – the end of bad relationships, the end of bad jobs, the end of bad habits, the end of bad thoughts, the end of living in the past and future and the beginning of living in the now.

We shall have to wait and see until midnight tonight what really takes place, what kind of effect the planetary line up will have on our own little planet.  Whatever happens, the only thing I can say for certain is that with each end comes a new beginning.  Or in the words of Sarah Chauncey Wooley “every day is a fresh beginning, every morn is the world made new”.  Let’s remember that when we wake up tomorrow morning – hopefully… 😉

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