I don’t like this time of year.
It’s not because of the cold temperatures or the
slow, snowy commutes.
It’s because of the darkness.
Nighttime’s early onset toys with my body. No
sooner does the evening news come to a close and I feel like a waste. It’s dark
outside, so, like some diurnal animal, lethargy overtakes me, my thinking
dulls, and I feel like I could doze off with ease. I still do my evening things
as a parent and volunteer but it’s tough to bring my “A Game” all the time.
Mind you, I’m chock full of energy and effort during
the day, just as I am very late into the evenings during our longer summer
brightness. I like light. I thank genetics and biology for the aversion to
darkness. My dad is the same way. My grandfather was, too.
Some people get it far worse than the Confer boys.
They get overcome by something called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which,
because of that same lack of sunlight leads to an abundance of melatonin which
creates depression, hopelessness, malaise, and even suicidal thoughts.
Doctors will tell you that you can fight those winter
blues with pills and lamp -- vitamin D and light therapy. That’s all well and
good, but nothing is better than the natural source of that -- daylight.
But, getting it is easier said than done.
Most working people can’t get outdoors until the
weekend because the government took away what precious sunlight we had during
the week. Well, more accurately, Uncle Sam didn’t take away the sunlight, he
just moved Mankind’s movements around it.
The recent “fall back” routine associated with the
end of Daylight Saving Time robbed us of an hour of daylight every evening.
That in conjunction with the shortening days as we close in on the winter
solstice makes for early nightfall and not much time – if any – to get outdoors
after work.
Daylight Saving Time’s (DST) later sunsets were a
blessing, something to appreciate, but oddly, a lot of elected officials want
nothing to do with it. When we changed the clocks numerous news reports were
quick to point out that many bureaucrats, at the federal and state levels, want
to do away with DST and leave everything as Standard Time, which means what we’re
seeing now (an hour earlier end to the day) even in the summer months.
Why would they want that?
The lawmakers always cite, beyond the inconvenience
of having to change the little hand on their watches, alleged increases in car
accidents and heart attacks on or around the day the clocks change.
If health and safety is the reason to call for the
end of DST, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to ditch Standard Time and make
Daylight Saving Time the standard? You’d allow the working class to go outside and
bask in the sunshine and get some much-needed exercise on winter evenings. That
would help beat SAD as well as North America’s obesity epidemic.
But enough about us adults. What about the children?
We relentlessly harangue today’s kids about physical
activity. We want them to ditch the phones, computers, and televisions and get
their butts outdoors to play sports, enjoy nature, and run around like youngsters
are supposed to.
Even the National Football League and public schools
across the country work together to promote something called Play 60 which
encourages kids to have 60 minutes of physical activity every day.
How can they when we just took away a full hour of potential
playtime?
For the next few months, a child who gets off the
bus close to if not after the four o’clock hour in Western New York has almost
no time to change clothes and get muddy, snowy, or sweaty.
They certainly can’t get in 60 minutes of vigorous
play before the sun sets. But, were we to have Daylight Saving Time, they
would.
So, doesn’t that, in a way, make the push to end
DST a form of child abuse?
We need to let kids be kids. Heck, we need to let
us old folks play, too. So, the next time you hear an elected official push for
the end of Daylight Saving Time, ask that misguided soul, “Do you like living
in the Dark Ages?” The world would be a better place if it was Daylight Saving
Time all the time.
From the 03
December 2018 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News
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