My beef with Pope Gregory XIII

Am I out of touch? No, the calendar is wrong.

Ever since Pope Gregory XIII gave us the Gregorian calendar in 1582, nobody has known what to do in this fuzzy limbo of a week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Do we keep eating? Do we start journaling our 2025 resolutions? Or maybe finally start the 2024 ones we never got around to?

I usually take this time to mentally weigh up the highs and lows of the year gone by. Measure the wins against the losses to determine whether it was a good year or a bad year.

If it was a good one, I pat myself on the back and then begin to grow increasingly anxious about how I’m going to do it again but better next year. Just to prove it wasn’t a fluke.

If it was a bad one, I tighten the cilice on my leg and crack the whip for every misstep.

I’m exaggerating obviously. My legs are far too skinny for a cilice.

I do get weirdly fixated on hitting those oh-so-important benchmarks within our precious Gregorian calendar – maybe you do too.

And it’s no wonder:

We’ve been trained since we were kids to evaluate everything in neat, 12-month cycles.

School hammered it in with end-of-year exams and “your final grade will determine the rest of your life, Andrew,” while work metrics do something similar with annual performance reviews.

So naturally we shove our personal growth into the same timeframe. We start to believe that if we didn’t cure cancer or grow a moustache by December 31, we’ve basically wasted our time.

My 2009 was a bust

But what if this “Good year or bad year” ritual is bullshit?

Author Simon Sinek talks about the difference between “finite” and “infinite” games.

A finite game is one with a clear endpoint, clear rules, and a designated winner – like football or Monopoly Deal. (Though, in Monopoly Deal, you might win the game, but you’ll probably lose your friends.)

An infinite game, on the other hand, never really ends. There are no final buzzers, no trophies, no confetti cannons. Just the ongoing process of playing, learning, improving, and going back for more.

If life were a finite game, maybe we could judge a year neatly, but I’m starting to realise, it’s not.

Time is arbitrary and its immediate verdict is unreliable.

One bad year might just be getting you ready for something you’ll experience a decade from now.

Maybe that business idea that flopped this year taught you the skills to land a big client next month.

Your heartbreak now might be the lesson you need before you meet someone who respects your inability to grow facial hair.

That “wasted” time might just be preparing you for future success.

I’m not saying don’t use “12 months” or “2025” for any SMART goals or resolutions. I’m saying if you blow it, don’t call the entire year a flop.

It’s only in hindsight that we get to piece our story together. So let’s reserve judgment on “good year” versus “bad year,” because none of us knows what’s around the corner.

Not even Pope Greg. He did not see that fever coming.