Time Out!

Did you make the shift to daylight savings with grace and ease? I didn't. Oh, my routine wasn't altered much. Within a day or two, I was past any effects on my circadian rhythm. It's just that twice a year the time change annoys me. Now before I hear from all of you who have a preference one way or the other about daylight savings time, let me explain. I don't care whether we're on DST or ST. I just wish we'd land somewhere and stay there.

Every year, twice a year, our time shift makes major news. Especially this year with all the speculation about how going on or off daylight savings time helps or hinders global warming, depending of course on the expert of the day being interviewed.

When did we all become so obsessed with time? It used to be that sunrise, midday with the sun directly over our heads (give or take), and sunset were enough to keep us together in some sort of common rhythm. Then, as we became more industrialized, we needed to divide our days into smaller and smaller increments as a way to coordinate with each other. At first, on or about a particular hour was good enough. Then minutes within that hour became necessary. Now, especially for those coordinating in the world of computers, seconds hold greater importance.

And if that's not enough, as if our game of hours and minutes and seconds has become too boring, we have created a new game where we get to change the time of day twice each year. Now there are whole discussions and disagreements about daylight savings time, how and why it became our practice, whether or not we should be going on each spring and off each fall, when the shift would be most helpful and most appropriate for school children, the earth, business…and on and on and on it goes. What have we come to that we are so busy we need to divide time into tiny increments and then adjust it twice a year based on some theory that only really works for a percent of the population?

All I want to do is sit in my chair with my cup of coffee in the morning and watch the sunrise. And I’ll gladly sit in that same chair each evening and watch the sunset. What time the sun rises or sets is not important to me. For the rest of the month I will have the time of my life ice fishing, no longer “doing time,” but instead, in time out! Try it for yourself. I bet you can find one or two days, on occasion, where sunrise and sunset are all that matter. There's no time like the present.

"But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day." ~Benjamin Disraelinn