By Linda Shaffer
As of Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 2am in my neighborhood, life as I knew it changed. No, it wasn’t a surprise party or anything that good. It wasn’t a Tsunami or anything truly horrid. While my life was being upended by the clocks around me, I was asleep. If I don’t wait up to celebrate New Year’s Eve, you’d better believe I am not staying up until 2am to party on while it turns to 1am for the unfortunate change dictated by Daylight Savings Time.
I already knew Bitey Boy was gunning for me. Why? First, he’s a cat and wants me to feed him at a certain time of his choosing. Next, every morning at about 7am he starts walking up my body. Not just part of me. He starts with my feet and walks the distance. It feels like he weighs 70 pounds and grinds his feet into any tender spots he may find on my shins. Then he comes to my head and says things. Cat profanity. I can’t repeat any of it here. He does this until I get up. After about three body crushes and profanity gushes, I give and get up. It’s usually closer to 8am because I’m tough. This is how I knew I would be getting up at 6am. This is not acceptable. I changed one clock on Sunday and forced him to stay up with me an extra hour and watch OPB. It paid off. I still got walked on and talked to but I got to sleep until my regular time. Kind of.
In truth, if there had been a party at one or two in the morning it would have been attended by our cats, dogs, livestock, parakeets, guppies and all other kinds of living things we feed. God help you if you are young and have children. Memory serves that this can be a very trying time, particularly if you have an infant. Why? Body clock. No matter what the United States Congress decides or as most commonly has been, does not decide, animals and all the rest of us are a captive audience of our clocks until our government decides something different.
In a presidential election year, you’d be swimming upstream if you thought any decision on something like this would be made. Why? It’s a bipartisan issue which has been shown in several different studies to be supported by more than 2/3 of our population. We hate changing time zones and we’re not alone. Turns out that most people on this planet don’t like the change either. Time zones exist around the world to accommodate time changes and facilitate government, commerce and communications. Apparently, in the United States we hate admitting we agree on something during this season or any season, even if it makes sense. God bless us.
The science behind time change is not very comforting. Statistically, we are more prone to a variety of problems these days. We have more accidents, are late for work and have more difficulty sleeping. This means we might suffer from depression. Put under a researcher’s scrutiny, it turns out that light is an amazing part of our lives and one we don’t pay enough attention to. Light is not just light. Each form has different components which affect our brains in different ways. Each day, we are exposed to any number of types of light, whether they be from computers, cell phones, windows, ceiling lights, sunlight or those tiny LED nightlights we put everywhere.
Like it or not, each of those lights sends a signal to your brain. In a way, all of them are trying to tell you what time it is and what you should be doing based on your past history. The Circadian rhythm says that your brain and body will be best off with a natural cycle of light and darkness. You will be most productive and healthy if you work during the light and rest during the dark hours. If there were a company named Circadia, they would pay your salary for you while you limited your winter work hours to light hours only. Unfortunately, this company does not exist and neither does a world that goes with it, unless you are one of those folks who live off the grid. You don’t need a clock. OK, maybe just one in case you need a reference.
Here’s the deal. We live on planet Earth. It rotates around the Sun every 24 hours. Coming and going this means we have varying degrees of light and darkness for roughly half the day. How much of that light and darkness will depend on where you live on this planet. Yes, I have been in the light at midnight in Alaska. I have had trick or treaters in the dark in Oregon. The exact time of these events was beyond my control then and it still is. Tomorrow I will get up at a time yet to be determined by my cat. Congress will do nothing about Daylight Savings Time. The world is spinning on greased grooves.
Have a great week my friends!