40 days

"To understand people, you must live among them for 40 days" - Arabic proverb

I am no scholar of 40 days, but a quick web search turns up countless pages of its significance. 40 days is referenced again and again in both Old and New Testaments of the Bible, 40 days crops up in the Torah, and 40 days also seems to be significant in the Islamic faith. There are 40 days of Lent. When Noah built that Ark, the rain poured for 40 days. According to the Talmud, it takes an embryo 40 days to be formed in utero. 40 day cycles are used to almost perfectly measure out the rate of each passing solar year. Moses in the mount? 40 days. Jesus in the desert? 40 days. An Islamic adage says that the prayers of a person who drinks wine or gossips will not be accepted for 40 days. When I took prenatal yoga, our teacher repeatedly stressed the importance of 40 days of bonding with the new baby, as well as 40 days of no exercise, sex, or physical stress post baby.

The cynic in me says that 40 days is just a convenient literary cliche that just stuck over time. But the part of me that is open to mystery just loves the significance of the universal number. I believe in 40 days.

I once read that it takes 40 days to cement a habit, and although I don't have the source to cite, I do believe it. So, for this reason I have decided to veer from our original goal of 1 month of daily blog posts, and will instead blog for 40 days straight.