‘God I hope this year is better than the last’

Used to lament the recent past, while suggesting hope for a better future.

May be ironic as the moral quality of time has no objective basis, but is necessarily subjective. This contrasts with cultural constructs such as era, epoch or period whose historiography are linear, reductionist, collectivist and homogenizing. The dissonance this provokes for individuals can produce either anxiety or humour.

When you eat dirt for the first time and leave your family to build a shack in the woods