Spring and Daylight Savings

 I often complain about time. I complain about how quickly it evaporates when I'm in the middle of something I'm really enjoying. I complain when it drags along when I'm doing something I really don't want to do. However, I reserve my most significant complaints to the annual twofer of time changes, neither of which I am a fan of. 

I think Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity have something to do with my irritation of time change. Because as a kid, I can definitely reflect that the days then seemed so much longer than they do now (today, they fly by like interstate traffic on I-80). Time is robbed from us year by year due to our own built-in obsolescence, we don't need a governmental edict to jerk us and time around further.

My biggest problem with the time change is that my body disagrees with it. I go through time change jet lag each time it is adjusted one way or the other. I think time stinks plenty by itself, it doesn't need to be treated like a kid next to a fat person on a rollercoaster.  Our body clocks are not as easily moved as our Smartwatches or kitchen clocks. No matter what we want to do with time, the rotation of the planet and the location of the sun are going to do what they do. 

My solution is simple, let's go back to standard time and leave it there. Daylight savings time is hardest on people in western time zones (and whose kids would go to school at 9:00 am in the relative dark). For those farmers and others who need or want to start their days before the sun rises, that's why Edison invented the light bulb. For the increasing urban population, we do not care when the sun comes up, as long as it does. Half the time we don't see it through the tall building we keep throwing up anyway.

Spring is the equinox, a time when day and night are kind of even-steven for a little while. Summer, the days are longer and I am happy for that. I hate that winter days are shorter than winter nights, but it is cold anyway, so why not stay in (unless you live in one of those blessed temperate zones where all the seasons all mush together, in which case you should think of shorter days as a "sin tax").

Human beings like to play God with all manner of things (e.g., the calendar)--some of it we can live with just fine, but time change is a relic of a different age and mentality. As is, the main beneficiaries are taverns that get to make an extra hour of bank when the time changes. In my book, we all need more sleep and less focus on productivity and/or drinking. We need to work shorter, not horder. Our planet would thank us for it and maybe our kids might even enjoy a little more time to ignore us.

I look forward to the day when the newspaper headline does not exhort us "Don't Forget to Spring Ahead/Fall Back." Both of those things can lead to a visit with the chiropractor and who needs that? To the barkeeps out there, I know you are with me--closing time should be closing time at 2 A.M.!