Time is confusing. My chiming clock, a staple in my household since my marriage in 1980, now chimes the hours completely at random. At four o'clock it might chime two. A cross-country move made it jumbly. I'm jumbly about time, too. My wristwatch battery is sluggish. Only my cell phone and laptop tell me the true times.
But is time really true? I run on relational time, not punctual time.
Daylight Savings Time has been extended by four weeks so on November 4 we turn the clock back, a week later than in previous years. More people are having trouble sleeping now and I wonder if it is time-related and our move away from real time or stress in the US. DST's effects are long-lasting and serious... it takes weeks for the circadian system to adjust and in some people it never does, according to one latest study. Daylight Savings Time... most people like it because "there is more light in the evenings/you can do more in the evenings."
We have an English sense of time. Time is documented differently in other cultures. Time is not perceived the same as we sense it and speak about it. In the US, verb tenses are just past. One tense. In Spanish and French, you have recent past and things that occured a long time ago. There is not just one past sense of time.
What actually is time? What is the neurological mechanisms behind our experience of time? Time varies by culture... What differences are there among past, present and future? What is real? Is time only an expectation and a memory? Is time more physical than psychological? Linear or circular? Is time subjective, dependent on the mind? Time is a measurement... but it is an envelopment? Time moves slowly, time can move fast.
graphic: U.S. government
I hate the time changes. I don't see that it saves any energy. The lights you don't turn on in the evening have to be turned on in the morning. And you're right about the circadian rhythms. It takes me weeks to adjust. Of course, my sleep difficulties arise from my 2-year-old who doesn't sleep through the night yet, but that's a whole other story!!! Our clocks all say different times too. Upstairs and downstairs are approximately 10 minutes apart.
Posted by: Janet | October 30, 2007 at 07:38 AM
However, until we all agree that there is some new universally accepted measurement, it would be helpful to use the same time that your surrounding culture uses. ie. the musical starts at 3pm, or church starts at 11am and so on. I know its hard, but the alternative is that everyone comes up with their own measurement and I believe that would be worse on those of you with time sensitive inner beings.
Posted by: anthony | October 30, 2007 at 08:10 AM
I think we need a starting time for things, but if one person in the house thinks you need to be somewhere 30-45 minutes early to be "on time", and the other isn't wound up tighter than an 8 day clock - that doesn't make one right and the other wrong! Guess which clock I look at! :)
Posted by: allison | October 30, 2007 at 08:26 AM
I dislike DST intensely, and never feel quite "right" until it is over and done with.
One's sense of time changes after life altering events have occurred, I have found.
Posted by: tut-tut | October 30, 2007 at 12:27 PM