The Most Dangerous Hour: Daylight Saving Time Throws Us

It almost seems more dangerous than helpful. Daylight saving time. Multiple people told me today they were “feeling” the lost hour. It was dragging them down. They couldn’t function properly. It’s your sleep rhythm that got messed up, I told each one of them.

The LA Times summed it up, I guess:

Though it began on Sunday, researchers have found the most acute effects occur on the first Monday after clocks spring forward. That’s when about one-fifth of the world’s population is forced to get up and go to school or work one hour earlier than their bodies are used to. 

The freeways were snarled and backed up this morning because of multiple accidents. I never knew daylight saving time was so dangerous, and that one hour of sleep could knock people for such a loop.

The Times article went on to explain that the first Monday after the time change results in the most heart attacks, car accidents, workplace accidents, and even more suicides.

If that one hour is so unsettling, maybe we need more sleep, in general. More rest, more relaxation, more reflection. More staring at the ceiling for hours and wondering, just wondering, where we come from, and where we’re going. Who am I? is a good question with which to start. What makes me important? is another. And, finally, How do I exist, in relation to others? What are my goals in this lifetime? (For more questions and reflections, you can find an abundance in Eric Chaet’s Humanity.)

And, maybe, we could use less stimulation. Less television. Less driving. Less shopping. Less working, if the working is not meaningful and fulfilling. All of it is wearing us out. It’s wearing us thin.

Mostly, I think, Charles Bukowski said it best in the Buk Tapes documentary about time management and the human rat race, (I’m paraphrasing):

You people, all you people, try to do too much. You’re always doing something. Trying to do more and more. I say people should do less. A lot less. Sit back. Have a beer. Take a nap. Lay in bed for hours. Doing nothing for long periods of time. But if you can do that, you’re lucky. Most people have to chase a dollar.

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2013-03-11 20:49:25

Source: http://www.deardirtyamerica.com/2013/03/the-most-dangerous-hour-daylight.html