something about time

There is something about time that I can’t seem to stop thinking about.

We measure time by agreeing upon an event and then counting from that point onward.  Today is October 17, 2008 AD.  It is this AD that keeps my attention.  It has been 2008 years, ten months and seventeen days since the birth of Jesus of Nazareth: AD stands for Anno Domini, or year of our lord.  Those not wanting to be explicitly Christian use CE, which stands for Common Era, which is just a nice way of saying the same thing without recognizing Jesus as the lord.  Wikipedia dates the use of this term to 525 AD, though this is how everyone has been measuring time forever. AD began to be used in 525, but before that people just used other events (like natural disasters, battles worn or lost, etc.) as starting points to count the date from.

The only result is that time is not universal but relative to whenever people agree to start counting from.  This is nothing new, but maybe like The Ring, if I pass it along, then it won’t bother me any more.  If you become similarly afflicted, I apologize, but you know what to do.