The Case for Daylight Savings Time
March 11, 2012 by Barbara Jacoby
Filed under Creating Happiness, Recent Posts
Early this morning at the magical hour of 2 a.m. we went from Standard Time to Daylight Savings Time and I am ecstatic. I have been looking forward to this for weeks. My co-workers have been doing a countdown to this day. Finally, I am getting my extra hour of daylight again and will be driving home from work with the sun still shining. But then I looked at a poll this morning on ABCNews.com and find that about half of the people who responded to the question, “Do you think that Daylight Savings Time is still a good idea?” responded “No, because it
When you need to spend the major part of a gorgeous day in an office or anywhere indoors, it is so much easier to release the stress of any day when you step out to sunny skies and a warm breeze filling the air. The light of day always lifts my spirits.
I tried to think this through. What is the tragedy of losing an hour over a weekend? Haven’t you ever stayed out an hour longer on a Saturday night than you planned when you had to get up on a Sunday morning? If you are bothered by getting less sleep, wouldn’t you either go to bed an hour earlier or sleep in an hour longer? Of course, you could go to bed a half hour earlier and sleep in a half hour longer to accomplish the same thing. Or perhaps you could just plain forget it and enjoy the day.
I hope that the time will never come when we don’t have daylight savings time. As summer approaches and the days get longer, everyone feels so much more alive and vital. When you need to spend the major part of a gorgeous day in an office or anywhere indoors, it is so much easier to release the stress of any day when you step out to sunny skies and a warm breeze filling the air. The light of day always lifts my spirits.
I think that I have a solution. I want to continue daylight savings time but I think that we should spring ahead in the middle of a work day. How about we do it on a Monday afternoon? No one likes to go back to work on Monday so how about we do it on the second Monday afternoon in March. That way, we minimally disrupt sleep as those who went to work in the morning or for the afternoon shift are already up and running and they will be paid for a full day’s work even though they were able to skip an hour.
My suggestion for returning to standard time is that we do it on the weekend as usual so that everyone can get an extra hour of sleep or, if they choose, and extra hour of play on the weekend. Who doesn’t appreciate an extra hour of “off” time to do as we wish? I think this solution would definitely please just about everyone and would secure daylight savings time for the future. Most importantly, it might just lower the number of people who don’t appreciate the light of day as much as I do.
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