The calendar brought a couple of time-altering events recently. The first was an annual one -- the springing forward of the clocks one hour for Daylight Saving Time. The second happens just once every four years, when we tack an extra "leap" day onto the end of February to properly sync the Summer Solstice with our Gregorian calendar.
While we accept both events as natural occurrences, in reality, they teach a larger lesson: If you don't like your circumstance -- change it. Time is eternal, but how we choose to document it is arbitrary. There are only 24 hours in a day, but which one it is at any moment is something that we decide.
The leap year is necessary because the Earth's orbit around the Sun is not exactly 365 days per year. It takes, to be precise, 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds for our big blue marble to circle our flaming orb -- we call that a tropical year.
The Daylight Saving Time adjustment, on the other hand, is not necessary, but is a choice. Some locales don't observe it at all. We do here, mainly for the benefit of farmers and school children, so that they'll have a proper amount of sunlight to work with in the winter months. The great benefit to most of the populace is, when the clock springs forward, it feels like the evening just got shot with a booster of glorious overtime sunshine.
What if we could arbitrarily bend time and days in other ways? What would you change, so that the life we live is a little more cheery and palatable? Here are a few time alternatives that just might make the world a better place in which to live and breathe.
Leap Forward an Additional Two Hours
Why stop at one hour? If a little extra evening sunlight is good, then a whole lot of bonus sunlight is great, right? If this change was made, sunrise on the day of the publication of this newspaper would be at 9:30 a.m., and sunset, brace yourself, wouldn't happen until 9:20 p.m.
That's June 21 sunlight at March 13 prices. Imagine what you could do with that time. Why, you could have dinner, take a long nap, and still wake up with plenty of time to take your poor pooch out for an extended walk.
You could put in a full day's work and still have time for a leisurely 18 holes of golf. Why, you could even watch the Sabres game and then step outside and see the sun go down. Now, that's what I call proper playoff-run hockey.
An Extra Saturday on the Calendar
Let's be honest, nobody likes Wednesday. Sure, we call it "hump day," but that's just a Jedi mind trick that we play on ourselves to try and deal with the soul-killing reality of a consecutive five-day work week.
So what if we swap out Wednesday and insert a second Saturday? First of all, it slices a full day off the work week, but it also ascends Tuesday to Friday status. Tuesday's always been a "well, I caffeine-fixed my way through Monday, guess I'll get down to some actual work" kind of a day.
Now it will be the prelude to the "mini weekend," and the pressure for any kind of meaningful productivity will be replaced with an ardent desire to coast until the 5 p.m. whistle frees you to the allure of the taverns and clubs.
60-Day August
As we mentioned earlier, the number of days in the year have to remain constant (and adjusted with the leap day) to keep in sync with the Earth's movement around the Sun. Nothing states that we have to distribute them as evenly as we do now between the months. What if we declared that August would have 60 days and September just one? It would extend the summer season and prove profitable for many in the tourism profession here.
Imagine another 30 days to go to the beach, take in a matinee ball game or visit a theme park. September is still a strong month for tourism here, but extended August would be off-the-hook, and the cash registers would be humming.
There are some detractions: Kids home from school an extra 29 days and two full months of NFL preseason football chief among them, but the full extra month of "Breaking Bad" will more than make up for it.
30-Minute Work Hours/90-Minute Home Hours
Just another example of people blindly following rules established eons ago. Why does an hour spent at work have to have the same number of minutes as one spent at leisure? They don't, and I think you'll agree that my way is a better way.
All work hours should be 30 minutes long, period. Fifteen-minute breaks would then only be seven-and-a-half minutes long, but I would lobby long and hard that the 30-minute lunch remain, as to eat any faster would probably cause gastrointestinal problems that would ultimately lead to missed work days among the labor force.
Home and leisure hours would then expand to 90 minutes each, giving everyone time to recharge and reconnect with their loved ones. Heck, employing this method might even save the rapidly deteriorating American family.
What about workaholics, you ask? How will they get their fix, working just 30-minute hours? The answer is easier than you think -- they'll just all work from home, problem solved.
Name Your Own a.m. and p.m.
Pop quiz: Do you know any night owls? Of course you do. The world is filled with people who only start to get wound up in the evening and can't fall asleep until the morning rays creep through the shades.
The problem is that most nocturnal people harbor a sense of guilt for their condition. They feel out of sync with the rest of humanity and spend a lot of money on sleep aids designed to put them on a clock they were never born to follow.
How do we solve this? We let everyone decide if they are on a.m. or p.m. time. For the hard-to-fall-asleep set, calling 3 a.m., 3 p.m. would go along way in soothing their ailing mental psyche. It would also give everyone unlimited minutes on their cell phone plans -- and that, as Martha Stewart is wont to say, "is a good thing."
So there you have it, just a few ways to adjust our arbitrary tracking of time for the betterment of mankind. Oh, and hey, if you picked up the Reporter at lunchtime when it came out on Tuesday, rejoice, you've only got four short work hours to go before the "mini weekend."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 13 2012 |