Tomorrow is the first Sunday of November and we are due to “Fall Back” an hour on the clocks. For some, this release from daylight savings time means an hour more of sleep on a crisp Sunday morning. When I was in college, my friend Robbie, who was desperate to do well enough in his grades to get into medical school, was so focused on time management that he would “bank” his hour and “use” it over the course of Sunday to do a bit of extra studying in whatever course he most needed. Paul, the guy who became my best friend for 30 years, was his roommate, and we would laugh and make fun of Robbie for being such an obsessive/compulsive who really needed to chill out a bit. I thought of them both this morning, fifty-two years since that Sunday on the second floor of 40 Ridgewood Road in Ithaca, New York, when I read a story today about the end of daylight savings time. It reminded me that both Robbie and Paul are dead now and time, for them, has a very different meaning.
The idea of adjusting clocks to make better use of daylight has ancient roots, but the modern concept emerged in the early 20th century. Benjamin Franklin humorously suggested it in 1784, though he wasn’t seriously proposing a formal system. The real inventor of Daylight Savings Time (DST) was George Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist, who proposed a two-hour daylight saving shift in 1895 so he could have more daylight hours to collect insects. British builder William Willett independently proposed it in 1905, lobbying for it until his death in 1915. Germany was first to implement DST on April 30, 1916, to conserve fuel during WWI. The UK followed weeks later in May 1916. The United States adopted it in 1918 with the Standard Time Act, but it was deeply unpopular and repealed after the war ended in 1919. From there it was, appropriately enough, all “On-Again, Off-Again” in its use in America. During peacetime between the wars, only some cities kept DST voluntarily. But WWII brought it back nationally (1942-1945), and it was called “War Time”. After WWII, it became chaotic – states and cities could choose whether to observe it, creating confusion. Then, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 standardized DST across the U.S., though states could opt out. Both Arizona and Hawaii chose not to observe DST (except the Navajo Nation in Arizona does…as do the vast national parks there like The Grand Canyon). I’m not sure anyone notices traveling to Hawaii, but driving through Arizona in the summer is certainly a temporal challenge.
It seems that that Sunday in 1973 was a more special DST day than I ever remembered. Under normal circumstances before 1973, DST would have ended for good on the last Sunday of October (October 28, 1973). However, Congress voted on December 14, 1973, to put the US on daylight saving time for two years, and President Nixon signed the bill the next day. This meant that instead of ending DST in fall 1973, beginning on January 6, 1974, clocks were set ahead to implement the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act, making DST year-round. The experiment was short-lived, though. On October 5, 1974, Congress amended the Act, and Standard Time returned on October 27, 1974. So while 1973 saw the decision to implement year-round DST during the oil crisis, the actual unusual clock changes happened in 1974-1975.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended DST to start earlier (second Sunday in March) and end later (first Sunday in November), but that has hardly ended the debate on the subject. There’s ongoing debate about abolishing DST entirely, with some advocating for permanent standard time and others for permanent daylight saving time. The purported energy savings are now questioned by modern research, so who the hell knows what’s best…chronologically speaking.
Chronos and Kairos are two distinct ancient Greek concepts of time that represent fundamentally different ways of understanding temporal experience. Chronos is quantitative, sequential time – clock time, calendar time. It’s linear and measurable in seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, decades, centuries and millennia. It’s the time you can count and track (unless it’s Y2K…remember that nonsense!). Chronos is associated with the inevitable passage of time, aging, and mortality.
Kairos is quite different. It represents qualitative, opportune time as in the “right moment” or “perfect timing”. It’s about significance and appropriateness rather than duration. It refers to a supreme moment, a season, or an opportune time for action. The concept is associated with the fullness of time. Think about “seizing the moment,” being in the flow, when everything clicks. Chronos asks “when?” and Kairos asks “is this the right time?” Chronos is objective and external while Kairos is subjective and experiential. Chronos marches forward regardless and is somewhat dehumanizing while Kairos can be fleeting, must be recognized for its specialness, and is ultimately a direct function of the unique human ability to conceptualize. In rhetoric and theology, kairos is particularly important – it’s about saying or doing the right thing at the right moment for maximum impact.
Robbie died in 2018 at age 65. He had some sort of debilitating nerve disease that rendered him so incapable of enjoying his life that he opted to end it by his own hand. Paul’s life ended in 2020 after he suffered for many years from a debilitating case of bipolar affliction that led to Tardive Dyskinesia, caused by long-term use of antipsychotic medications, and created symptoms of repetitive, involuntary movements that made his life very unpleasant. But there was that grand moment, back in October 1973 when we were all in our prime, sitting in our fraternity house and laughing about what one hour could possibly mean in our otherwise seemingly eternal lives. Was that about Chronos or Kairos?
St this moment I am on alert for two people in my life. My good friend Frank just got out of the hospital after yet another surgical procedure. Frank and I have been friends for 37 years. He actually knew Paul from skiing in Park City back in the day. Frank is 88 and one of the finest minds I know. I could only wish to be as sharp as Frank on his worst day. I am hoping Frank comes through this and carries on for many more years to come. His attitude is commendably positive. Meanwhile, Kim’s brother Jeff (who is my age…72) has been in the hospital for over a week now. He went in with internal bleeding from a serious duodenal ulcer probably caused by pain meds taken for his failed back surgery or his bad knees or perhaps his chemotherapy for leukemia, went on a respirator for four days, has had heart fluctuations and now two strokes… all in what QEII might have called an ICU “Septimanus Horribilis”. Yesterday was Halloween and Kim put a Groucho Marx nose/moustache and glasses on him for a smiling picture from his hospital bed. He remains upbeat.
What do I take from all of this? How will I spend my DST hour tomorrow? My favorite expression has long been Carpe Diem. That’s trite by today’s standards. Maybe it should be “Illegitimi non carborundum” or “Don’t let the bastards wear you down”. What I do know is that Chronos is a bastard that cannot be escaped, but Kairos knows no bounds. Fuck DST, let’s just switch permanently from Chronos time to Kairos time.