Not again?
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In this week’s Camino a Ítaca, the space-time continum is once again altered. The cruel act happens this weekend in Europe and I believe the next in North America. Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)
It’s that time of year
again for that biannual exercise in futility that was
supposed to end for good sometime last millennium. A time where we prove to
ourselves that we can tamper with the very fabric of time itself and still
manage to be late for work on Monday morning. It’s a global tradition as old as
Benjamin Franklin’s bifocals and twice as bewildering. It’s as if someone took
a perfectly functional clock and decided to add a level of complexity that
would make a combined team of NASA engineers blush.
One can’t help but wonder if Daylight Saving Time is some
sort of grand social experiment, designed to test the limits of human adaptability.
It’s a cruel joke, like giving a blindfolded man a Rubik’s Cube and asking him
to solve it while riding a unicycle on a tightrope. It’s a test of our ability
to reset all our appliances in our cars and homes, avoid being late for
appointments, and resist the urge to strangle the next person who cheerfully
reminds us that we “lost an hour of sleep.”
I can’t help but picture the ancient Romans, with
their sundials and toga-clad timekeepers, looking down at us and laughing. They
managed to build an empire without ever resetting their sundials. Yet we, with
all our technological advances and wizardry, are confounded twice a year by the
simple act of moving a few hands on a clock.
And let’s not forget the
impact on our sleep patterns. It’s as if we’re all subjected to a cosmic jet
lag, except without the sheer joy of international travel. Our circadian
rhythms are thrown into disarray, and it’s as if our brains are trying to
decipher an alien language, one where “7:00 AM” suddenly means
“6:00 AM” and “time for bed” means “I’ll just watch
one more episode on Netflix.” It’s like constantly crossing back and forth
over the border into Portugal without any signs or GPS telling you where you
are and trying to arrive on time for a lunch date.
But
perhaps the most absurd aspect of Daylight Saving Time is the way it creates a
rift in the space-time continuum of our homes. You see, not all clocks reset
themselves automatically through WIFI, and so we must embark on a scavenger
hunt through our own homes, searching for those rebellious timepieces that
insist on holding onto the old time. The microwave blinks 12:00 in defiance,
while the wall clock chimes the hour with an air of superiority. It’s a battle
of wills between man and machine, and the machines are winning.
Daylight
Saving Time is a biannual exercise in chaos, confusion, and cosmic comedy. It’s
a reminder that no matter how advanced our society becomes, we can still be
bamboozled by the simplest of temporal manipulations. It’s an indicator that we
really can’t make up our minds about something so simple as to leave the clocks
alone.
So,
when you find yourself bleary-eyed and befuddled on the morning after the time
change, remember that you are not alone in your struggle.It’s
a spectacle that would have made the gods of Mount Olympus chuckle with
amusement, while us mortals, drenched in coffee and confusion, continue to
struggle through this timeless farce.
