Twice a year I am asked to pretend that time is a flexible and human-managed concept. Twice a year I fail at this.
I don’t have a strong opinion on whether daylight saving time should be kept or eliminated. My feelings are less policy-oriented and more existential. What I object to is the confident assumption, embedded in the practice, that humans can simply decide what time it is and that the body will go along with it.
The body will not go along with it.
The fall time change is theoretically the easy one. You gain an hour. People describe this cheerfully, as if they are receiving a gift. You wake up at what the clock now calls seven and feel, briefly, like you have gotten away with something.
Then three o’clock arrives and you feel like you are dissolving.
The hour you “gained” in the morning has been deducted, with interest, from the afternoon. The accounting is not in your favor. You owe a debt to the time system that you did not know you were incurring, and it will collect.
My approach to the time change has evolved over the years into something resembling acceptance, though it is the grudging acceptance of a person who has lost an argument to a calendar.
I set my clocks the night before, as directed. I go to bed at the usual time and lie there feeling confused. I wake up uncertain whether I have slept too little or too much. I make coffee and stand in the kitchen and try to find my relationship with the morning, which has been rearranged without my consent.
By November I have usually adjusted.
By the time I’ve fully adjusted it’s almost time for the spring change.
Twice a year, without fail, I read an opinion piece explaining why we should make standard time permanent, or daylight time permanent, or abolish the practice entirely. I agree with all of them. I have agreed with all of them for as long as I can remember.
Nothing has changed.
The clocks go back. The afternoon dissolves. We go on.