Today is Leap Day, an extra day in our lives that is given to us by calendar makers only every four years. It’s a reminder of the value of Time, which seems to have become mankind’s most important dimension. Most of us need uniform calendars and clocks to exist effectively in today’s world. We need to be “on the same page” with others for everything from baptisms to funerals.
In significant part, that’s because we now live our lives according to how long it takes us (and the Earth we’re on) to make one revolution around the Sun. A trip around our star takes us 365.2422 days, as we now measure things. That’s about six hours more than the standard calendar year of only 365 days, which includes a February of only 28 days.
So, we forget about those six hours until they add up to a whole day in about four years (6 x 4 = 24); and, we make that today, February 29. If we didn’t “leap” into this extra day, time would continue to get away from us and we’d end up with summer beginning in mid-July. (Brooklin, Maine)