Let There Be Light

Twice a year, in the wee hours of the morning between Saturday and Sunday, most of the country changes their clocks by one hour. Forward in the spring, backward in the fall. The trickiest part sometimes is remembering which way you’re going. There can be a lot of grumbling over this exercise, but we get ‘er done, and within a week all is forgotten and life resumes as if nothing ever happened.

70 countries around the world and every state in the U.S. participate in Daylight Savings Time, with the exception of Arizona and Hawaii, because they like to march to the beat of their own drum. Within Arizona there are exceptions to the exception. The Navajo Nation, most of which lies within the borders of Arizona, chooses to observe DST, but the Hopi Nation, which is completely surrounded by the Navajo Nation, does not. Which means that in one state there is a time zone, within a time zone, within a time zone. Confused yet?

Technically you can’t save daylight, whether you change your clock or not. We can just control which specific hours of the day enjoy natural light. There are people who hate the time change and others who embrace it, but love it or hate it, what most struggle with is the adjustment. I think the best way to deal with the malaise is to stop converting! We spring forward and when the alarm sounds in the morning at 6:00 we say, “But it’s really 5:00! Ugh!” In the evening we note that the clock reads 10:00, but say, “It’s really 9:00, so I can stay up another hour”, which is why at 6:00 a.m. you are back to “Ugh!”

We treat Daylight Savings Time like the metric system. When I was in elementary school somebody decided that it would be a good idea if we learned how to use metric. Their nefarious goal may have been for a complete conversion, but it never really caught on. We Americans like our feet and inches and when we’re faced with a kilometer, or celsius we want to know what that means in miles and fahrenheit. However, there are several professions that use metric or other forms of measurement. My son, the pilot, uses centigrade, nautical miles, and knots. My son-in-law, the paramedic, uses milligrams and kilograms, but what they don’t do is convert. They use the measurement as is, without changing it to what we’re familiar with. Therefore it’s normal and natural to them. Right now it’s 3:00. Just 3:00, not “really” 2:00!