Time is NOT on My Side
Time is NOT on My Side
Time flies when you're having fun.
The older you get, the shorter the time.
Time and tide wait for no man.
Remember that time is money.
Time ….We never have enough. I already have too many demands on my time and now an hour of it just disappeared with the order to "spring ahead". As someone commented: "I find it pretty amusing that I lose an hour and they call it saving."
I can easily set my clocks ahead. I mutter about how many there are in my house as I go around changing clocks and various digital devices. I'm grateful that my computer resets itself and reminds me to do the others. As I do the chore I wonder just why we change time.
Whose idea was it in the first place? Never one to let a question go unanswered I check and discover that Benjamin Franklin first suggested this idea in an essay in 1784. Yikes!
- In 1907 an Englishman, William Willett suggested setting clocks ahead during summer months, but the House of Commons rejected the idea.
- Several countries including Australia, Great Britain, Germany and the United States adopted summer daylight savings time during World War I to take advantage of longer daytime hours and reduce the need to use fuel for artificial light..
- During World War II clocks were advanced in the US on February 9, 1942, and stayed that way until September 30, 1945. England even used double summer time, advancing the clocks by one hour and then by another hour during summer months.
All that is well and good. I shouldn't be fussing about Daylight Savings Time. After all it has been a fixture of life since before I was born. But there is a big difference between springing ahead on Memorial Day and falling back on Labor Day compared to Daylight Savings time as we now practice it.
Tinkering with time just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me right now. You can tell me to change my clocks and I do it and even live on the schedule dictated by that new time. But my body is not so easily fooled. The clock may say it is midnight, but my body knows it is only 11 PM and won't go to sleep. So I go to bed at midnight, which is really 1 AM on the clock. After a few days of this my brain is screaming for a good nights rest while my fickle biorhythms refuse to cooperate and spring ahead.
I will adjust … it just takes time … and in the meantime I am reminded of the words of a song(1) that take on new meaning as I struggle with my lost hour ….
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Peggy Erickson
04/15/01
(1)Time Passages by Al Stewart & Peter White
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