Obediently spring forward

This weekend we will be doing our semiannual clock change.  If most of us do it as we usually do, we will do it without really asking ourselves any questions about why we do so.  We will do so because Congress and our state have told us to.  We will not ask ourselves whether we are damaging our own internal clocks.  One of the reasons we are given for the change is to save energy which we are told will help us stave off a national crisis.  We do not even ask if there might not be possible savings in petroleum if some of us made the switch and others not, although it would seem that staggered travel hours would hint at that.  [Since we have already given up so much of our individual prerogatives to accommodate national crises – real or suggested -- is it no surprise that our congresspeople cave in leading us in walking in an orderly line on this?]

 

We Americans have always prided ourselves on our individual independence, on the each person for his/herself attitude which led our ancestors to cross the oceans, level the forests, settle the woods and prairies, and develop what was the world’s most free and prosperous society.

 

But on something so basic as where we set our watches [if we still have watches] we exercise no individuality and demonstrate no resistance at all.

 

This is true for individuals and organizations also.  My employer will change my work schedule to match the government changes.  I do not know whether my boss has just never thought about the matter or [more likely] dismissed the idea quickly figuring that exercising independence would probably be more confusing than the resulting sensation of independence and defiance would warrant.

 

When I was a lot younger I worked for a summer in a creamery where our day was somewhat dictated by when the milk trucks could get the milk to us and the trucks were at least somewhat influenced by the milking schedules of cows.  It would have seemed like a natural place to leave clocks unchanged in the spring, but even it did not do so and we often had to work late for the last truck to arrive and the milk to be processed.

 

But each year I still hope to see a story somewhere about some person or company deciding to exercise a little individualism.  Something about it would send a secret, quasi-patriotic thrill along my back and put a little warmth in my heart.