As Congress gets closer to abandoning the practice of Daylight Saving Time once and for all, we are hearing more about how disruptive it is to our daily routines and hazardous to our health. I was not especially looking forward to “springing forward” on Sunday (and losing an hour of sleep), but I knew our greyhound, Argos would not be confused by the time change. He always knows what time it is.
Maybe his previous life as a racer accustomed him to a strict schedule. But even now, Argos insists on going to bed at 8:00 pm sharp and getting up at precisely 6:00 am. His evening meal is at 6:30 and he demands his daily treat at 4:00 pm on the dot (but he would happily accept additional treats any time.) Argos has a routine that suits him, although it took him weeks to train us to get it right. And as far as he’s concerned, Daylight Saving Time is irrelevant.
Many humans would agree. Recently, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida reintroduced his bill, ambitiously named the “Sunshine Protection Act” for permanently, as he put it, “locking the clock.” Last year, the Senate voted unanimously to end DST, but the House didn’t get around to voting on it so the measure had to be brought up again this year. Rubio voiced what many Americans feel about the practice. He said, “This ritual of changing time twice a year is stupid.”
Yes stupid…and arrogant. Who do we think we are—imagining we can change time itself, just by making a proclamation? Humans invented the clock and now we think we are masters of time. The entire concept of past, present and future is beyond our grasp. Buddhists tell us past and future are illusion. There is only now.
The James Webb space telescope can see light coming to us from 13.8 billion years ago. If it could focus on more precise details, we would be able to watch events as they unfolded billions of years in the past. Then, for all intents and purposes, wouldn’t the ancient past and the present be taking place simultaneously? It’s enough to give a person spring-forward-and-fall-back whiplash.
For the Tlingit people of Alaska, the term “Haa Shagoon” refers to the idea that the tribe’s ancestors are reincarnated and reborn as their own descendants’ descendants, thus creating a circular view of time. (And making their family tree look like a tumbleweed.)
In any case, the sun does not need the likes of Marco Rubio to protect sunshine and no amount of human legislation is going to disrupt Argos’ internal clock. And, although my smart watch (which is wirelessly connected to the cesium fountain atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado, so accurate, it loses only one second every 300 million years) tells me it’s 5 p.m, Argos is telling me with absolute certainty that it’s actually “treat-o-clock”.