It’s been more than a week now, but the memories are still fresh: the sluggish sense of pushing through the fog of awakening an hour early, followed by the utter amazement of enjoying some after-dinner sunshine.
How many more times are we going to have to go through this?
Twice per year, in the middle of the night, the majority of our current modes of keeping time either skip an hour altogether or go back to the hour it was an hour ago.
The next day (or for some of us, over the next few days) we manually change the ones that didn’t do it automatically as we realize they don’t match.
This literally serves no purpose any more other than making us feel like it’s later (or earlier) than it really is for a week or so. Oh, and, of course, the actual damage it does to our physical and mental health.
We have yet to hear an argument for continuing to change the clocks twice per year that points out the many benefits of doing so, whereas there are hundreds of studies that point to negative repercussions from doing so.
Sure, there are all kinds of arguments to be made – even economic and health-related ones – that it’s nice to have another hour of daylight between work hours and the end of the day. But that only affects the people who have “normal” work schedules anyway. A little flexibility from their employers would accomplish the same result without all of the negative impacts on the rest of society.
Or we could just keep that time and stop going back to the one that doesn’t do that, because what difference does it make if it gets dark at 4 p.m. or 5 p.m.?
Whether it’s the time we have now or the time we had a week ago, it’s time to pick one and stick with it.We promise we’ll still remember to check the batteries in our smoke detectors.
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