Daylight Saving Time (DST)...tick, tick, tick...

Did you remember to turn your clocks back yesterday? Did you wake up this morning, like I did and look at the clock that glared 7:10 am and think how lucky I was to eek out an extra hour of sleep knowing full well I went to bed at 11:00 pm -midnight my real body time (rbt)? After a few days of trying to figure out what my real body time would be if I didn't change the clocks, I surrender to change. Daylight Saving (no "s" at the end of "Saving" is the correct usage) Time (DST) is a perfect example of an international event that is treated as a non-event, yet everyone has a Daylight Saving Time's story. DST impacts all areas of life from the political to the litigious, from the economic to the environmental, and from death to life. It just shows that any change, particularly as it relates to time, does not go unnoticed.



I got a chuckle last night when my son came up to me and assuredly stated that his body had already adjusted to Daylight Saving Time. Implying as if he was miraculously cured from some mysterious ill-fated disease. I reminded him that it had not even been 24 hours and his body had no way of knowing what it had to get used to, and to give it a few days and then we would see. And, by the way, "Yes, he would have to go to bed earlier and could not stay up to watch Sunday Night Football this particular Sunday."

How is it that it took until my 30s to finally get a catch-phrase to remember which way to turn the clocks: in the fall, the time "falls back", and in the spring, "spring ahead". Fall or spring, there is always some give and get. In the fall, it is the extra hour we get back in the morning which is the only consolation for the darker and colder days and nights. Likewise, in the spring, I have no problem giving up one of my precious hours of sleep knowing each day is one day closer to spring, to sunshine, the warmth, to green. Remember: tempus fugit whether one is "falling" or "springing." In the end, it's inevitable: time keeps ticking so don't waste a minute more of your day.