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I am not sure if I can explain this concept which, although I use it virtually every day in my old age, I have never attempted to verbalize.

When archaeologist excavate a site, they dig down through layers---and different layers reveal certain discoveries.  Time is like that:  we think of it often as a horizontal flow, but it is, also, a vertical accumulation.  We have only three hundred and sixty-five days in each year; each day is given a position and a number within a month; and, due to the structure of the year, the date (number within the given month) and the weekday on which it occurs changes each year (July 10th was a Saturday in 1976, and a Sunday in 1977); although in leap years, the date and weekday combination changes by two weekdays (July 10th was a Thursday in 1975, and 1976 was a leap year, during which it moved to the Saturday position.  Regardless of a date's weekday position, it can begin to acquire layers of meaning to the attentive person.  This concept can become most useful staring in  adolescence, when emotions begin to present themselves much more dramatically than in the elementary school years---if the adolescent can figure the concept out alone, or receive it as advice from some old fart like myself.  I was too backwards to figure it out for myself during my adolescence, so I wish some old fart might have shared this with me.

July 10th is the date I am using for this discussion because it is so personally significant because, on that date, in 1976, my First Beloved, Cerulean, helped me to escape the repressive control of my mundane name, and the mockery that had been made of it because I seemed "different" too certain of my classmates and peers, by finding my true identity in the c.b. handle, Starwatcher, which eventually evolved (decades later) to what it is now:  Starward; and what it shall remain.  

So of all the July 10th's I have seen, that one in 1976 has the most splendid shimmer and glow about it.  Now when it came around again in 1977, I was no longer to closely involved with Cerulean and was dating someone else.  The relationship was satisfactory, but not exceptionally so (not in comparison to 1976), but in 1977 I was not yet aware of the layers, so I did not even acknowledge, on July 10th, 1977, what the previous year's experience had been.  Forward to another year, 1978:  I was six months and one day past the first of three horrific "break-ups," and still in deep mourning for the broken up relationship.  So full of myself, I did not even take the least comfort from the meaning of July 10th.  In 1981, the worst year of my life (after the second horrific "break-up; and, by then, over a year since my graduation from college with a potentially useless degree, and ten months from the failure of my first real job after college), July 10th fell on a Friday.  But, as in 1978, I was still too full of myself in the immediate moment to take any comfort from the 1976 signficance.  

Let me describe another situation.  That first horrific "break-up" I described above happened on Monday, January 9th, of 1978.  For the next fifteen years, that date would always seem to bear a kind of haunting dimness.  But, on Sunday, January 9th of 1994, I became a Christian during the evening service at a small Baptist chapel within walking distance from my home.  And though the day had begun with overcast weather and dim skies (customary in our vicinity for the month of January), the sky had cleared by evening, and when I left that Baptist chapel, I looked up to the dramatic and comforting sparkle of a full vista of stars.  The nightmare of that lunchtime severing of a romantic relationship (in the presence and hearing of some of our friends who were lunching with us), which had haunted and bothered me since that date, gave way entirely to a new, and very spiritual splendor, of January 9th of 1994.  The date of my subsequent Baptism, the 16th, and its documentation, was accepted by the Orthodox Church for my chrismation on Saturday, April 19th, 2014.

The accumulation of significances, either positive or negative, by any given date of any person's life can be used to create a gradually widening perspective as that person ages.  I am a couple of weeks past the completion of my sixty-fifth year.  My health has been failing for some time, and I have some medical procedures scheduled for this month, one of which may be a bit difficult to experience.  My chronic heart failure seems to have accelerated, and there is a sort of swelling in the left side of my abdomen.  I do not know how long I have to live on this earth; although I do know how long I have to live---eternity---with my Savior, the Regnant Christ, the Son of God, Who said I could because He died into my death to shatter it, and then rose from His own Death to include me in His Resurrection.  And so I think of this time like the first term of my freshman undergraduate year:  it had numerous difficulties, along with a few pleasant experiences, but it gave way, on November 23rd of 1976, to a splendid reunion with my First Beloved, and with the c.b. community, channel 22, who had not abandoned me but received me back with a most undeserved and heartening welcome.  This is now a spiritual metaphor for what I believe to be the final segment of my given lifespan on earth, and then my transport, startward, to Christ's eternal Kingdom.

I have offered these thoughts and statements in good faith.  I apologize if I have failed to explain them clearly, but I have done the best I can.

Starward