Page 4 - AASBO EDGE Winter 2023

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
BY DALE PONDER
Be Two-Faced Like Janus
Dale Ponder
Happy New Year, AASBO!
Another year in the books, folks. For some of
you, 2022 may have been the best year yet. For
others, you may be glad that its behind you.
Regardless of your feelings, the change of the
calendar provides you with an opportunity for
a new beginning, a new outlook on life, and a
chance for change. To accomplish this, you may
want to consider becoming two-faced. Unlike the
supervillain published by DC Comics, who battles
the dark impulses of the criminal world against the
righteous path of the morally good, I’m talking
about being able to process the past at the same
time as the peering into the future. Be like Janus.
The early Roman calendar consisted of 10 months,
or 304 days, with each new year beginning at the
vernal equinox, the turning point when daylight
begins to overtake the darkness and the North Pole
begins to lean toward the sun again. I guess the
Romans didn’t find value in the winter months and
just chose to ignore them. If you’re curious, mark
your calendars, the spring equinox in the northern
hemisphere will be at 2:24 PM (MST) on Monday,
March 20. So precise, right? Thanks Google.
Unless this coming legislative session gets a little
out of hand, we probably won’t call it the end of
the year by then. Over the centuries, the calendar
fell out of sync with the sun, and in 46 B.C. the
emperor Julius Caesar decided to solve the problem
by consulting with the most prominent astronomers
and mathematicians of his time. He introduced the
Julian calendar, which closely resembles the more
modern Gregorian calendar that most countries
around the world use today.
4 THE EDGE
As part of his reform, Caesar instituted January 1 as
the first day of the year, partly to honor the month’s
namesake – Janus, the Roman god of beginnings,
whose two faces allowed him to look back into the
past and forward into the future. Hmmm, a recent
AASBO annual conference theme rings a bell.
Anyway, many believe that when it comes to
human beings, the best predictor of future behavior
is past behavior, while others believe that synopsis
to be somewhat oversimplified. Psychological
scientists, who study human behavior, agree that
past behavior is a useful marker for identifying
future behavior. They contest that the past can be
used for the future under certain conditions:
(1) Frequent and habitual behaviors are more
predictable than infrequent ones.
(2) Anticipated conditions and situations must be
the same as the past.
(3) The person must remain essentially unchanged.
(4) The person must be consistent in his or her
behaviors.
So, doing the same thing over and over. If every
day I went to the same restaurant for lunch, ordered
the same food, and sat in the same booth, many
may predict that habit to continue and could easily
“predict” what I’d do tomorrow.
In western civilization, we use the turn of the
calendar to reflect on the past. Some of us use this
time to resolve into improving a certain aspect of
our life, and some are actually able to maintain that
resolution for the first week of January. I applaud
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WINTER 2022-2023