I have to admit—and I know I am in the minority here—but I kind of like daylight saving time.  Once a year, in the spring, it feels like I have been gifted an extra hour of daylight.  It means summer is coming, that I will be outside more, that the earth is coming back to life and I have more time to witness it.

And…once a year, in the fall, it feels like I have been gifted an extra hour of sleep.  Oh, how blessed and beautiful that is.  (Of course, it only feels like this if you don’t have small children at home…)

So, yeah, part of me really likes daylight saving time.

But the rest of me hates it.

It is like extended jet lag…but I didn’t get to go on the trip.  It is like staying up too late to watch a basketball game and then trying to work the next morning…except I didn’t get to watch the game, and I still have to work.

Something in my being feels like I am living against the flow of what is.

It feels more debt than saving.

Daylight saving time seems to be us thinking that we are not a part of this dirt/oxygen/genetic world, that we can bend it to our will, that we can live outside of its rhythm and timing.

We cannot.

And yet we try so hard.  Instead of allowing our bodies and minds and spirits to slow down…caffeine.  Instead of allowing our selves to start shutting down and move into sleep mode…laptop.  Instead of allowing our being to tell us when it is time to downshift…electricity and light.

I learned this while on a trip to Haiti.  The compound we were staying in only had a very limited amount of (solar generated) electricity, so we were not allowed to tap into it: charge our phones, run equipment, keep the lights on.

And so…I’d fall asleep.  At eight.  Sometimes seven-thirty.  Really.

I realized how much light and screen and generated energy prop me up when I have run out of my own generated energy.

I try to pay attention to this clock, or time, within me, not only in the evening now, but also in the week.  Since Sunday is a rather giant day for me, I took to expecting Monday to be a crash-and-burn day.  To live into that.  To trust it.  To not see it as a menacing moment in my week, but rather a vital part of it.

Two things happen to me when I feel myself heading down that descending road into what I can only describe as a mild depression.  One, I start getting anxious that the descending trajectory will keep moving downward…forever.  Two, I reach for a cup of coffee to mask it.

So, in response, I remind myself that this is what my being needs to do, that there is a rhyme and rhythm to my week, that I need to allow myself to go into that space.  And then to trust that I will eventually come back out the other side…when my body is ready.

Now, I recognize that there are those with chemical and emotional and physical disabilities that cause the downward slide to be steeper, more severe.  For them, an outside agent is often needed.  It is not masking that they are doing, but rather medicating.  It can be necessary.

But…all of us, no matter our disabilities or depressions or discouragements, need to remember that we are part of this rhythmed earth, with its own seasons and days and nights and temperatures.

We need to remember that these movements and seasons and rhythms are also within us.  We need to learn to welcome them, trust them, and learn to live in step and tempo and timing with them.

Even when we feel ourselves moving from late fall into early winter.

Maybe especially when.