20140309.0843

On this Daylight Savings Day, let us pause to remember the hour that has been sacrificed to some noble end or another.  Let us not forget the hour of sleep we might otherwise have had today, an hour that we have given up because we have been told we must in deference to some outdated thing that might perhaps have made sense once but certainly does so no longer.  Let us not neglect to recall amid our increased fatigue that there is some reason that what we have given up, we have not given up in vain.  For surely there is cause for us to continue in the tradition, to maintain the way that things have been done, and to make things harder upon ourselves in the process of doing it.

(Let it be also known that, although I write this little piece later in the day than is customary for me, it is not because the time-change escaped me this year as it has in the past.  I actually had an appointment this morning, one final breakfast with my visiting family.  It was good to see them, and it will be good to get caught up on work and on The Work now that they are on their way back to the Texas Hill Country and points beyond.  I enjoy interludes, certainly, and intermissions, but the next movement needs to be played and the next act to be performed.  It is for such performances that I am paid, after all, and I very much need the money.)

In all honesty, I do not know why the United States still suffers through Daylight Savings Time in large part (not all of it does, and I commend that part that does not).  When more of the country was rural, it made sense.  When more of the work done in the country was done in places that get much of their light from outside, it made sense.  Neither of those is the case anymore; many work in offices without windows, and those who do not are often at work before sunrise and leave work after sunset whatever the civil time may be.  Those whose work relies on the sun will rise before it whatever the clock may read.  Those whose work does not will turn on artificial lights regardless of what the clock says, as well.  It is entirely needless, then, to save daylight now; the daylight is as it is, and the clock itself no longer matters.

The matter is not even really one of tradition; Daylight Savings Time as a more or less continuing phenomenon goes back less than my parents' lives.  It goes back less than Star Trek.  There is ample living memory that recalls a time when Daylight Savings was not in place--why it does not clamor for a return to that part of the "good old days" amid the many far-less-than-good parts of them escapes me (unless, of course, it is based on hate for those born afterwards, which I think is often the case).  For myself, I am simply struck by the inconvenience and lack of necessity; there is little reason I see to keep doing this to ourselves.