Shared Time and Focus Matter
What is the purpose of special days and months focused on particular topics? Why have Veganuary, or No Meat May, or World Day for Farmed Animals (October 2nd), or Fast Against Slaughter (the 2nd of each month)?
One reason is that is provides an opportunity for many individuals and organizations to focus on the same thing without needing extensive coordination. If everyone knows "on X day, we do Y", and people buy in to that idea (which isn't trivial to accomplish), then you can create a social norm that is more stable through time.
Focusing on a smaller window of time may also create a sense of scarcity that is attractive to humans, which is probably a part of what has made Veganuary such a hit. Veganuary can pitch itself as a relatively small experiment—"give it a try, it's just 1 month after all." Choosing January gives people a focal point: a specific start and end that people can organize around. (Although of course, we don't want people to end the experiment at the end of the month.) Contrast this with a more general call to "go vegan"—when? how? with whom? Veganuary helps answer those questions: January; with these resources; and with the hundreds of thousands of others who are doing it with you.
In his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman tells us of one more reason that shared days are important. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union tried an experiment where they staggered everyone's work days to keep factories and businesses running seven days a week. People still got a day or two off, but they got different days off.
The experiment ultimately failed, and the Soviet Union switched back to the standard schedule. One partial reason for the failure is that the lack of shared days off took a toll on the population: “What is there for us to do at home if our wives are in the factory, our children at school, and nobody can visit us …? It is no holiday if you have to have it alone.”
Shared time together has a multitude of effects, from enjoying joy and laughter, to sharing information and resources, to planning coordinated efforts, to strengthening relationships which are then kept throughout the year. It also serves as a psychological marker for the passing of time, the changing of seasons, the continuation of life.
Some of these reasons are important for our advocacy for animals; some of them are important for our personal well-being. All of them are reasons to remember the value of shared time and focus.
