BENGALURU : The New Year is upon us! It is a leap year at that. One extra day. If you are a salaried employee, you might find yourself a bit resentful over the idea that it is one extra day of work than in other years without a proportional increase in salary. Then again, if you are a self-employed person, you might think of it as one extra day of possible extra earning for the year – a bit more than what you might typically make each year!
The one extra day is only an adjustment to the little extra time that the Earth takes to remove around the sun every year, of course, but the leap year is what ends up accommodating four years worth of extra time in one day, instead of keeping the little fractional day every year where it belongs. The astronomical mathematics of it apart, the idea of little excesses that go unaccounted for on an ongoing basis getting accommodated at a different time is something special.
If you think about it, you are probably doing something like that all the time. You might take it easy a few days and then slog it out on another day, or whole days of fasting, followed by a feast, long periods of abstinence that end with unbridled revelry. Few things happen like clockwork – even clock work!
In loving the people we love as well, there are leaps that we need to make every now and then for the bits that did not happen. It is not easy to be constant or even consistent in how we love someone. Our commitment to one another may not necessarily change on an everyday basis, but all the other things that make up life, such as work, health, commuting, extended families, other people, the very climate and threats to peace and prosperity – all of that has us scrambling and we may not have the time and space to consistently express our commitment to love each other. Even if we assume all of those things are steady and strumming along nicely, our feelings and emotions are not necessarily steady as a rock. We find ourselves wavering in how much we like the people that we love – often feeling a whole lot of contradictory feelings alongside core emotions.
Perhaps that’s why we need to allow for leap times now and then for our relationships. Once in a while, we need to make time to allow ourselves the opportunity to feel our feelings, say what we need to say and experience what we wish to experience with each other. Something extra to make up. A bit of attention. A little focused effort to emphasise this relationship, and that we don’t lose track of what truly matters in the long run.
A little leap is necessary to make up for the time lost in keeping our lives in order so that it truly is in order. Maybe this leap year, use the extra day you get in the calendar year to make that leap of love.
(The writer’s views are his own)