Time is a pretty interesting thing. Daylight saving time? More like nightlife-losing time. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we can all thank Ben Franklin for its invention.
Among other reasons, it was thought that daylight saving time helped people by shifting an hour of daylight in the morning to the evening to help with energy consumption and to keep an hour of morning sunlight from going by lamented as we curse the sun’s earlier arrival on summer mornings.
Some college students ought to be particularly fond of this reasoning then: I can’t tell you how many students I’ve seen that almost entirely block their windows with blankets or towels to keep the sunlight out of their room year-round. A lot of them are on such disturbing sleep schedules (here’s a nod to you, architects-in-training) it’s a wonder daylight saving time means anything more than a small creep in deadlines lurching forward by one hour.
Spring forward, fall back.
I hope everyone realizes that the notion of even saying that one man — even as mythical as Ben is — somehow invented an extra hour is a little silly. It is the construct, the observance, that was put into practice. Certain common observances such as this are often decreed by governments or made common through religion. Look to Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Christmas for examples. It is interesting that time holds such sway over us that we all willingly accept this somewhat-whimsical change on our clocks to magically teleport the sun around when we choose. The numbers on a face or digital screen are the whistles to our Pavlovian drooling, and if the clock says it’s time to wake up, guess what we’re going to do? We hit the snooze button: It is much too early to get out of bed and start hopping around. If only someone could shift our waking hour to a little bit later in the day.
And now we’re back where we started. Everything is relative. I think that all of us put too much emphasis on the time of our lives. Yes, as a tool, time is very useful: It helps you plan meetings and meet deadlines. Doesn’t that sound fun? It also helps you coordinate events and share common schedules so we can all see each other’s pretty faces at the same time every day. But do keep in mind that those numbers cracking the whip over your deadline, be it for an essay, an exam or an opinion piece for a newspaper, though important, are really just signifiers of every present occurrence’s relativity to everything else.
Look at a river: Most people say the river starts as a stream in the mountains, becomes the mighty flow that passes before them and finally becomes the tributary meeting the ocean. People liken this to their lives — young in the mountains, old in the ocean. The fact is, all of those instances of the river are happening simultaneously, all the time. There is no young you and old you: The only reality of your younger years is your memory of them, and the same goes for your prediction of old age. No matter how thin you slice it, your present, right now, is the only reality. Sun will rise; get used to it. Change your clock; change your thinking.
Too bad we can’t shift age around like we do daylight saving time: In this town, suddenly being teleported to the age of 21 would not go unappreciated.
Wesley Campbell is a fifth-year English major. His column appears on Wednesdays.
