Daylight Saving Time - it doesn't matter at all

It's that time of the year again. Daylight Saving Time change. We got it back, the hour we lost 30 weeks ago. At least in most countries on the Northern Hemisphere. In other places they just changed to Daylight Saving Time. In the US they will change back next weekend. Some countries don't do those changes at all. As if time zones make a global social life not already complicate enough. (Okay, the mess was bigger before time zones had been defined)

Actually it's not like we really lost an hour and now get it back. All that happens is, that we change the time on our clocks and watches, right.

All that happens is, that maybe we confuse for a while our biological clock, because we push it somewhat out of sync with what we are used to. We are used to let some more or less mechanical thing tell us, when we should do what. In our world of high division of work we hardly can avoid it. Time given by clocks gives us a reference helping us to coordinate and organize us, less as individuals but more as society. Could you imagine modern society without clocks?

What we do in Spring and Fall is: we rearrange somewhat society's time matrix in relation to, well, could say nature. Not a big deal.

For many it might cause a couple of days the unpleasant experience of jetlag: a body (and mind) out of sync with its surroundings. For some it might take weeks to adjust.

People deal with jetlag all the time. Travel to a different time zone, shift work, forced to get up earlier than our body would prefer to, or just the weekly changes between weekend and working day for some - there are many ways we stress our bodily natural timing, circadian rhythms. The clock change is just a moment, when a lot of people do it for a change together, though with different degrees of impact.

In our modern, urban societies we care little about our chronobiology anyway. We're not rising with the sun, we get up at the right time to be at the right time at work/school, no matter what. The right time is told by clocks. We're up late into the nights, because electricity delights us not just with artificial light but as well with such things as TV and computers. Some of us work around the clock, having to change their activity time frequently. Many others more or less enjoy the regular rhythm of office work 9-5.

Our bodies adjust to all that - not always well though. Best it seems to work, if we have a regular schedule, like always getting up around at a certain time. Stay in your routine and you should feel good. A few always feel out of sync, society's everyday time matrix doesn't ever seem to fit to their personal time matrix.

Daylight Saving Time is nothing really special, considering. It's just one more little thing we do with (mechanical) clocks. You might even argue, it helps to get somewhat more in sync with night and day rhythms varying from season to season. The latter bothers people living closer to the equator less, so not much of a surprise, that Daylight Saving Time is more a phenomenon of the Northern Hemisphere and industrialized nations.

We don't shorten though our times of activity when the daylight phase shortens, do we. We just change some digits or move the hands on our clocks, apart from that our lives are business as usual.

For the records: In 22 weeks we will be back to Daylight Saving time. Earlier for the US, and for others it will be back to normal time then.

By the way: In 2 months it will be Christmas – unless you follow Eastern Orthodox traditions that is, which celebrates Christmas day according to Julian calendar timing.

 

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