I suppose that this might be a challenging year to a person who suffers from triskaidekaphobia. Of course it may be easier for such persons than it was a century ago. We seem to write the date less often. Much of our work is done by computers, which automatically write the correct date. Today is already the fourth day of 2013 and I’ve had to put the date on several different documents and so far, I have only written 2012 once or twice. But then, as far as I know, I am showing none of the symptoms of triskaidekaphobia. Triskaidekaphobia is a word coined in 1911 and is the official name of the phobia associated with the fear of the number 13. I just like the word. I suppose it would be better to have a word with 13 syllables, but seven is pretty significant.

I’ve stayed in hotels that don’t label the 13th floor, or at least that call it the 14th floor. The elevator as a 12 and a 14 button but no 13 button. I guess they have trouble renting rooms with the number 13. Of course, I have always wondered how many people that actually fools. If one were really suffering from triskaidekaphobia, wouldn’t it pay to avoid the 14th floor in hotels as well, just because of the way that they number them?

But it is a bit hard to avoid the whole year 2013. I wasn’t around in 1913, so I don’t know much about how people approached that year. Woodrow Wilson was sworn in as President of the United States. Henry Ford finally got his moving assembly line going, reducing the assembly time for one of his cars from 12½ hours to 2 hours 40 minutes. Down under, in Australia, they started building the then new capital, Canberra. John D. Rockefeller established the Rockefeller foundation with a donation of $100,000,000 – big money in those days. Stravinsky premiered the ballet, “The Rite of Spring,” causing a riot. And Pancho Villa was battling it out with the authorities in the Mexican Revolution. In Bavaria, Otto Wilhelm Luitpoid Adalbaert Waldemar von Wittelsbach (King Otto) was succeeded by King Ludwig II. Otto had been suffering from mental illness for a long time and had been confined to Furstenried Palace near Munich for years. All in all, it was a year of good luck for some and not so good luck for others. I suspect that 2013 might prove to be a mixture of good and bad as well.

I’m not much for superstitions. I remember that the number 13 is supposed to be unlucky because that is the number of people at Jesus’ last supper: Jesus and the 12 disciples. At least that is how many people are shown in the famous painting. But it is possible that there were others present. I properly tied noose is supposed to have 13 turns, but I don’t know if that is because the number 13 was already considered to be unlucky or not. They say that it is unlucky to have 13 guests at a dinner table. Our table isn’t big enough for 13 anyway. We’d have to set up a card table for the extras.

But as we adjust to writing the new date, it is worth noting that the 21st century is getting a few years on it. It doesn’t seem so long that the year 2000 was a kind of new adventure. We awaited the dawn of the new century with a bit of fear as Unix coders scrambled to correct some dating problems in obscure lines of computer code. The fix seemed to work and the power grid continued to work. The disruption of the so-called millennia problem was no greater than the end of the 13th Baktun in the Mayan calendar. Dates seem to come and go and already we’re into the second decade of the new century.

I’m not good at predictions, but it seems likely that this year will bring the deaths of some beloved elders and probably some tragic losses that catch us by surprise as well. There will be a mixture of grief and celebration, good news and bad news, joy and sorrow. That is typical of each year.

But I’m not ready to join the writer of Ecclesiastes in declaring that there is nothing new under the sun. The circular view of time presented in that book seems to be a sort of Biblical minority report. Much of the rest of the Bible presents history as proceeding from a beginning and heading towards fulfillment of the promises of God. Then, in the midst of it all, there is the opening of Ecclesiastes with its sense that “what comes around goes around.” It does seem to be a perspective that stands in contrast to much of the rest of the bible.

Shakespeare questioned the idea in Sonnet 59:

If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former chil.
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whe'er better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O, sure I am, the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

I don’t know if your time is somehow better or worse than former times, but I do suspect that it is different.

So I begin 2013 with the expectation that it will bring newness, surprises and twists and turns that we cannot now anticipate. I look forward with eager expectation and a sense of mystery.

The teenage years of our children were an adventure – perhaps the teenage years of a century will be equally so.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.