At some point as this Saturday night becomes Sunday morning, our clocks will spring forward. I’ll admit I’ve never really gotten the point of Daylight Saving versus Eastern Standard and that whole 'spring ahead' and 'fall back' mnemonic is little more than nonsense in my book since when we're all done playing with the clock's innards, the time is what the time is.
I'm especially not sure why we do it late on Saturday/early on Sunday anyway. What would be so terrible about a Friday afternoon at four suddenly becoming a Friday afternoon at five? Good night, everybody, have a great weekend! Nope, not a chance.
Aside from that rabbit Alice encountered in Through the Looking Glass, we're the only species on the planet that arbitrarily divides the day into smaller and smaller increments to the point that neither the mind nor the eye can comprehend the difference between 0.001 seconds and 0.0001 seconds.
Animal, vegetable, mineral, most everything else adapts to the 'gets dark later/gets bright earlier' hot and cold parts of life here on earth, but not us. We impose, or attempt to, ourselves on our environment and surroundings. Take a look around and tell me how you think that’s working out.
We created a concept we call "time" and then worked its division into seconds and minutes that added together we call hours and then gathered up twenty-four of them, pronouncing that to be a day. But wait, there’s more.
We then lined up seven days into a week (not six or eight, seven), combining them in various clusters of varying lengths called months concluding here, my dear, with that which we call a year. And we remain undeterred that nothing else on this planet does any of that. Seems to me, fellow bi-peds, with our big brains and opposable thumbs we could work on bigger things, but that’s just me.
For the early part of next week, most of us will be out of sorts and/or out of sync and will blame it on all those clocks springing forward. But that’s not where I think we should focus our attention. I’m more concerned that so few of us have a plan for what to do with all of the extra daylight we’ve been getting since the winter solstice with Daylight Saving (no ‘s’ by the way) just making it official. That’s the real pity.
But having the time is one thing; doing something productive and worthwhile with it is something else entirely. How many projects around your house have you left undone because you just didn't have the time to get to them? Maybe tackle cleaning out the basement/attic/garage or shed project? And before you start, call Public Works and arrange for a pick-up.
And if you're already caught up on the around the house projects, I'm not going to lecture or hector because your mileage may vary but there are people and projects in need of your extra time and singular talents, be it on your street, neighborhood, city or state. I'm not talking large-scale projects like leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but down to earth, helping-hands stuff.
Invest that Daylight Saving hour and the dividend it returns will benefit all of us.
-bill kenny
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