Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1066826
24 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 DECEMBER 2018 OPINION Raphael Vassallo In defence of 2018 I'VE always found it a tiny bit awkward to write the tradition- al, retrospective, 'end-of-year article': you know, the one that usually starts, 'As another year draws to a close', blah, blah. For starters: there is no reason under the sun why the calendar year should 'start' or 'end' at precisely midnight on 31st December; or indeed, at any other specific date or time. In fact, it never used to in the past… not, at least, before 'hu- man beings' suddenly sprang out of nowhere, and started tampering with the mechanics of the entire cosmos (as they have a tendency to do). Yet 'years' had been steadily rolling by in their billions be- fore that… without such things as 'calendar dates' to ever actu- ally 'start' and 'end' on. So why do we celebrate New Year's Day on 'January 1st'… and not, say, 'the thirteenth of Thrim- idge, at precisely four strokes past evensong'? It's a question I've been asking for donkey's parsecs now, and I've yet to hear a single, logical reply... But a far more serious problem is that 'end-of-year' articles, by definition, always have to be written for the last Sunday of the year… which also means that technically, the year in question will not quite have 'ended' yet. Kind of unfair, don't you think, to simply write off a passing year – labelling it 'the Year of This', or 'the Year of That' - when it still has two whole days to go? It almost reminds me of the death of legendary British footballer George Best in 2005: when UK newspapers were in such a mad rush to be the first with the story, that around five of them reported his demise while he was actually still alive (though not exactly 'kicking'). Well, 2018 is 'still alive', too. On its deathbed, perhaps… maybe taking its last gasps as we speak. So don't you think it's kind of rude to be talking about it in the past tense… like it's already snuffed it, and gone to take its place in the Great Almanac in the Sky? Show a little respect to the dying, for crying out loud. After all, years have feelings, too. We say 'Happy New Year', remember? And if years can experience sensations such as 'happi- ness', they can surely also feel loneliness, sadness, fear, and suffering. (You never thought of that, did you? No, you only ever think of yourself…). Besides: a heck of a lot can happen in two days, you know. The entire universe, for in- stance, was created in only six: and you can just imagine what might have been left out, had God decided to give himself a four-day week instead. Take 2018, for instance. Already it has been widely blamed for things like 'Brexit' (which, let's face it, is excep- tionally unreasonable… when you consider that 2018 wasn't actually around to vote in the Brexit referendum anyway); and just like all its predeces- sors, it is also being held re- sponsible for all the celebrities and cultural icons it 'took away from us'. Stan Lee, Aretha Frank- lin, Stephen Hawking, Peter Shelley, Bernando Bertolucci, Nicholas Roeg, Emma Cham- bers, Burt Reynolds… what, so it's suddenly 2018's fault, that they all just happened to kick the bucket within the same, arbitrarily-selected 365 days? Suddenly, it's no longer the ter- minal illness that killed them… or the tragic accident, or the fatal overdose, or the whatev- er… but the year in which they actually breathed their last? By that reasoning, you could charge every calendar year from Anno Zero with mass murder in the first degree. Every historical genocide you care to mention would simply pale into insignificance, com- pared with the global body- count of a single year. And no particular reason to single out 2018 for any special treatment, either. Let's face it: it could have been worse. It could have taken Keith Richards away, but (yet again) chose not to… Ooh, hang on, wait. Like I said: there's still two whole days to go. Plenty of time to reverse the Richards reprieve, and maybe even throw in Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr – or both – to the bargain. But then again… by the same argu- ment, 2018 might still have a surprise in store in its last 48 hours. All those people it 'took away'? Well, it's still in time to give them all back. Hey, don't laugh: it's not like it's never happened before. Why, at least two people in recorded history – Lazarus, and Jesus - came back from the dead… and if I'm not mistaken (but I might be) it was roughly within the same year. Or at least, not too many years apart… The bottom line is, it may be a bit premature to claim that 2018 'robbed us' of Aretha Franklin or Burt Reynolds. In the scale of 'possible-but- improbable possibilities', one cannot realistically exclude that they – or any other of 2018's victims – may rise from their graves before the stroke of midnight on Monday. Who knows? It may even prove to be the start of the Zombie Apoca- lypse: something else to look forward to in 2019… So tell you what: let's all cut 2018 some slack for a change. It wasn't exactly the best of years, but it wasn't exactly the worst either. And on both counts – i.e., literally 'for better or for worse' – it cannot be blamed for any of the events that made it the (admittedly rather lousy) 'year it was'. It is not 2018's fault, for instance, that the local politi- cal atmosphere has darkened to such a degree, that people are now openly reorganizing their social lives on the basis of pure political trench-warfare… something I have not seen in this country since the distant 1980s. Nor has 2018 – in and of itself – made any direct contribution to all the financial stats and fig- ures that the government likes to boast about so much: the fact that our economic growth rate, at 7.1%, is the highest in For starters: there is no reason under the sun why the calendar year should 'start' or 'end' at precisely midnight on 31st December; or indeed, at any other specific date or time