What Time Is It?

We are all "supposed to" set our clocks forward one hour tonight. Those of us in the U.S. (excepting Arizona) that is. So what time is it now? Well that's the funny thing about time. So arbitrary random imprecise and uncontrollable for humans still that we had to invent the mind boggling and inane leap year whereby every few years we add an extra day to the 365 day calendar. Those unfortunate souls unlucky enough to have been born on this extra day, traditionally February 29th in the United States, only get to celebrate their birthdays once every four years rather than once a year like everyone else. The other three years it's as if they were never born. No birthday to speak of, point to or wake up feeling special on. It simply doesn't exist for them and there's nothing they can do about it.

But that's time. There are numerous reasons pointed to in response to why Americans still partake in this archaic exercise of what is commonly referred to as Daylight Savings Time (DST for short if you've ever closely examined the detailed small print on most clocks watches and smart phones). Our understanding of time and the methods that govern how we deal with it revolve around the earth's rotation around the star at the center of our own solar system. Essentially time is all about the great and powerful Sun.

Of course this only applies to solar centered earthly societies. Some cultures around planet earth use both the sun and the moon to govern how they deal with and interact with time. The Chinese use a calendar based both on solar and lunar cycles. God only knows (that I'm too lazy to run a Google search to remind myself why and) what year it is in the Chinese calendar.

In most so called Western cultures including America the majority of people casually accept that we are currently in the year 2013. Of course that's total bullshit. An arbitrary number. Jewish people don't believe this or subscribe to it. The Chinese don't. Neither do most Muslim countries. They all have different years they are currently living in. Just ask. The more you learn the more you'll begin to recognize how utterly random and arbitrary this figure is. Truth is we don't live in any year. Not 2013. Not 4711 as the Chinese people think it is (I looked). Not even 1434 as Muslim people all over the world think it is. Nope. We have no idea what year it really is.

In the bigger picture we are in NO year on any calendar. They're all made up. So much so that we can't even agree what year it is amongst ourselves. The worst part about the Gregorian calendar, the system we follow in the West that supposedly tells us it's 2013, is that the maladroit pope who created it got the whole thing wrong way back when and ended up dating things four years off of what he was originally mandated to do. So depending on how accurate one wishes to be in regards to the actual year it is we're actually in either the year 2009 or 2017; but definitely not in 2013.

Most people don't seem to care much about this little known fact, let alone that even if right on accurate the year is still a man made figure with no logical basis for its existence in the universe or mass consciousness. The same is true of hourly time. Right now my phone says it's 12:49am. But as I look up from my phone all the clocks around me emphatically state that it's 1:49. That's because I've already set all of them one hour ahead so we don't wake up confuse and an hour behind the rest of the world.

Time zones of course make the keeping and monitoring of time even more confusing and impossible to believe in. Again the time zone paradigm was created because the time of day is different depending on where one happens to live and love on planet earth; it is based on where the light from the sun hits the earth and when it recedes or disappears. The sun doesn't leave most of the land mass we call Alaska for weeks at a time, making it daylight there for days and weeks straight. That pretty much wipes out any logical reason to have a sun centered system for time keeping there. But that doesn't stop Alaskans from pretending to know what time it is or what day it is.

In real time it is now 12:58 am where I sit. But in an hour or so we are told that we should set our clocks ahead by one hour. Because I am about to go to sleep and need to wake up at a certain time tomorrow for all intents and purposes it is really 1:58 am now.

But that's just me. If you're in Hawaii right now it's about five hours earlier than 1 or 2 am. Dinner time perhaps. If you're on the east coast it's already early morning. You've already set your clock ahead so it's 5 am and you might be waking up already on Sunday. I'm writing this on Saturday night. And there's no way you can convince me otherwise. Of course if you happen to be reading this in the UK or Paris, France it's 9 or 10 am Sunday morning. If in Iran it's already 1 o'clock in the afternoon. And to really shake things up let us remember that for those reading this in Australia or New Zealand it's 1am Monday morning. You've already lived through the Sunday I haven't even gone to bed to wake up to tomorrow yet. How was it? Sunday? Did anything crazy happen? Anything newsworthy?

Frankly I hope not. I think we've all had enough with crazy newsworthy days. It would be nice to fall asleep believing that tomorrow is going to be just a quiet peaceful day with nothing much to report on except maybe the weather.