Happy New Year 1405, Iran! Wait… What? I thought it was 2026

Did you know that 20th March 2026 is the Persian New Year (Nowruz) observed in Iran and several other parts of the region?

While much of the world is already settled into 2026, Iran is preparing to enter the year 1405 under the Persian Solar Hijri calendar.

1405 sounds like it should belong to another world entirely, yet it exists now, in the same present moment as 2026.

You hear 1404 and instinctively think of a medieval world of slow travel, handwritten letters, kingdoms, unclear maps, long before electricity, long before aircraft, long before nuclear science entered ordinary political language. In much of the Gregorian 1400s, much of the world was still moving at a pace shaped by horses, seasons, and survival. Europe was centuries away from modern industry, and the idea of uranium enrichment would have sounded impossible.

Yet in this other 1405, uranium is discussed, missiles and anti-missiles are being dispatched, sanctions are debated, and nuclear capability belongs to current international conversation.

I find it simplistically strange that the same number can hold such different worlds depending on which history counted it.

Then not very far from where my feet are, Ethiopia is still in 2018.

Only a short distance away, the calendar gives you eight years back.

2018 does not sound far away until you realise how much can happen in eight years. Governments change, friendships shift, businesses begin, children grow, and lives transform.

Then under the Hebrew calendar, marked each year by Rosh Hashanah, it is already 5786.

That number goes in the opposite direction entirely. It feels as though life there has already travelled far ahead of some of the questions I still have in 2026. It sounds like a year in which cars should be flying and cities suspended in air like in the movies. Instead, Israel is at war and the headlines still sound more familiar than futuristic.

And I admit there are days that sounds appealing in that the idea that I could borrow that future briefly, stand there, and look back at my present with more peace than I currently have.

And of course, those are only a few of the calendars still alive in the world. The Islamic calendar is moving through 1447, shaped by the moon and shifting its months across seasons. The Chinese calendar is in 4724, carrying its own long historical count (The Minguo calendar used by the Republic of China, it is Year 115). In Thailand, the Buddhist calendar places the present year at 2569. 

That may be what I like most about calendars as they remind us that time is not only measured, it is interpreted. Different systems, different beginnings, different years all waking up to the same morning.

Every culture counted from something it considered important enough to begin from like a birth, a migration, a creation story, a season, a moon.

Today is 2026 only if we agree to one calendar, because depending on where you stand culturally, spiritually, or historically, humanity is not living in one year. Of course, one shared calendar makes practical sense; economies, travel, contracts, and global systems would be difficult to run if every meeting began with a debate about what year it is. But beyond practicality, calendars reveal something deeper.

Different numerical histories are running side by side, sharing the same day.

If I could choose freely, I suspect some days I would go forward to 5786 and borrow hope.

Other days I would return to 2018 and correct a few things while they were still small, because maybe the mistakes I call old are still recent somewhere.

But whichever calendar I choose, one thing remains unchanged...

...Tomorrow still arrives.