When I was a child I’d wake up on a weekend morning thinking happily how I had two whole days off from school! I’d think about all the delightful things I would do–depending on the weather, and what fun it was to have two whole days to do it in. Time for children is much different than it is for adults, as any parent can tell you. Trying to get a child to hurry when there is something more interesting to do is quite a task.

Regardless of the fact that humanity invented clocks most likely in order to coordinate movement, time has become a tyrant for many. Isn’t it odd that something we invented has so much power over us? Then to further complicate matters, someone came up with the idea of Daylight Savings. Several someones are actually responsible, beginning with Ben Franklin who thought it up originally, though no one actually implemented the idea until the 20^th century.

This readjustment we go through every spring and fall is fast approaching. Stephen rejoices: he feels the hour stolen from him in the spring is being returned. I notice my timing is off, and all of a sudden I have an hour less of daylight to use for anything I might have planned. Plus mealtimes are disjointed for a while. Stephen is resentful that “W” took three more weeks from standard time and tacked it onto daylight savings. He can be quite vocal about it.

What is daylight savings? It’s not as though we can bank any of the minutes or hours we might wish to “save.” When I spend time, I can’t take it out of my wallet and plunk it down on a counter. Time is slippery stuff and my experience with it is that there are occasions when it speeds by and those when it drags, yet it’s all the same objective time. Ever notice that from a subjective standpoint going somewhere seems to take more time than returning home? Yet the amount of miles traveled as well as the minutes or hours spent remains the same.

Unfortunately for Stephen’s feelings, my habit has always been to try to pack as much as I can do into whatever time I have. Much to his annoyance because he prefers to leave and arrive early, I also have a tendency to try to do more than is reasonable in whatever time there is before we leave. Or else I plan too much for what is realistic and then regret what I have to leave undone. To me time is more precious than money. It is possible to save or spend cash to one’s satisfaction, however that cannot be said about time, which despite our illusions to the contrary, we cannot actually control.

Regardless how true this may be, I seem unable to avoid finding one last thing to do before the allotted time is up. Why this is I am not sure. I do believe it is a habit that would be better broken than continued. Meanwhile I will work at this the best way I know how.