Do yourself a favor: Embrace the Ides of March

At some point in your education, you might have been assigned to read Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” But even if you weren’t, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with one of the more popular phrases from the play, “Beware the Ides of March!”

The line is spoken by a soothsayer who warns Caesar to be careful on the Ides of March, which nowadays we recognize to be today, March 15th. The Ides of March is believed to be the day when Julius Caesar was betrayed and murdered by close friends on his way to a meeting of the Roman senate.

If you would like to watch that scene dramatized, click here to see the way it was depicted in the 1953 film version of “Julius Caesar" (which by the way starred a young Marlon Brando as Marc Antony).

Historically, the Ides of March occurred in the middle of March, but in the calendar of Rome during the time of Caesar, March was the first and not the third month of the year. According to religious and social practice at the time, it was a time of reckoning observed by paying your debts to start the new year afresh.

Not a bad idea, really.

If, like many people, you made New Year's resolutions you have since abandoned, consider today to be a do-over. Whatever bit of self-care needs attention in your life, make today the day you start paying attention to it (even if you've tried and failed before).

Whether it's something spiritual, physical, emotional, or related to your career, the Ides of March offers a clean slate on which you can draw whatever picture you would like.

You could do that any day, of course, but there's something inspiring to me about observing a time of self-renewal on the same day as the ancient Romans.

Beware the Ides of March? No. Embrace the Ides of March!

Things you may not have known about Leap Day

Happy February 29th! It only comes every four years, folks, so enjoy it.

Well, it usually comes every four years. Turns out there are exceptions, and I'm not sure I knew about them.

I give full credit to the folks over at TimeAndDate.com, which is the place from which I stole the following material. I just thought it was too good not to share:

Why do we have Leap Years?

Leap years are needed to keep our modern day Gregorian Calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds – to circle once around the Sun. This is called a tropical year.However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year, so if we didn't add a day on February 29 nearly every four years, we would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by approximately 24 days.

Which Years are Leap Years?

In the Gregorian calendar, three criteria must be taken into account to identify leap years:

• The year is evenly divisible by 4;

• If the year can be evenly divided by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless;

• The year is also evenly divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.

This means that 2000 and 2400 are leap years, while 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are NOT leap years.

The year 2000 was somewhat special as it was the first instance when the third criterion was used in most parts of the world since the transition from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar.

Who invented Leap Years?

Julius Caesar introduced Leap Years in the Roman Empire more than 2000 years ago, but the Julian Calendar had only one rule: any year evenly divisible by 4 would be a leap year. This led to way too many leap years, but it didn't get corrected until the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar more than 1500 years later.