Celebrating the Return of Daylight Savings Time
March 8, 2026
Let’s give a collective round of applause for the return of daylight savings time!
Seeing the sun set at close to 7:00 PM tonight, something that hasn’t happened since the third week in September, will no doubt constitute a vast and most welcome improvement. Winter can be harsh on the senses, and this past one has been colder and stormier than normal. With that comes worries about slipping on ice, frozen home pipes, leaky gutters, skidding cars, and clearing off walkways and the driveway.
Make no mistake, early March is still winter, and for me this is a month with more than its share of painful memories such as the timings of my father’s death, my mom’s cancer diagnosis, a phone call with news of an eliminated job, and the onset of two extended bouts of bronchitis. The arrival of daylight savings time is not about a present change but rather a hope-inspiring harbinger of pleasanter weather on the way.
While some changes cycle round-and-round like night and day, the four seasons, and festive holidays, others are linear, such as the progression of life from toddler to student to adult and finally senior citizen. In that odyssey, beliefs take hold, some of which stay anchored for life while others undergo periodic revision. In my own case, the winter of 2026 will be one to remember not merely for the weather but more fundamentally the backdrop that drove me to reassess things I once held as true.
I find it harder to envisage good and bad news as the balanced sides of life, with moments of concern enhancing appreciation for alternating times that bring joy. I find myself doubting humanity’s intrinsic dignity and less hopeful that the arc of history inevitably bends toward justice. I find the Star Wars model now more resonant wherein a force inside each one of us has the capacity for promoting empathy and doing good but that can be equally prone by life’s circumstances and tribalist callings to embrace a destructive journey.
Changes in the United States explain part but not all my unease, and I take only slight comfort from the history of past crises that were overcome. This time seems different, more Orwellian and corrupt all the way to the top and present in many other countries as well. The internet, social media, and artificial intelligence have redefined truth, while primary elections and unconstrained money politics have blown up the guardrails of democracy. I believe nuclear war was only averted these past 80 years because one superpower agreed to think globally, not parochially. America was never as close to perfection as we wanted to believe, and it’s now apparent that problems rooted in colonial times, if not earlier, continue to fester. America cannot be America without the steady infusion of new hunger, talent, creativity and experience that immigration has always brought.
In this season of discontent, religion has been prominent on both sides of the aisle. Self-defined Christian nationalists represent a significant component of the population seeking a stronger executive power, and houses of worship have also been a haven for protestors against that direction. I am troubled by the centrality of loyalty used by President Trump to separate friend from foe. It resembles religious stories – God testing Abraham with a demand to sacrifice his son and a creed that identifies unbending faith in Jesus as the litmus test for gaining eternal salvation. I’ve been much less surprised by history’s parade of power-seeking individuals than by the vast minions willing to be so led. In the similarity of tyrannical rulers demanding loyalty from their citizens and religious stories in which an imagined God judges people’s fate by their vows of faith, that is say whether or not they stay unquestioningly loyal, makes the wide appeal of leaders like our current president appear much more understandable, although for me not something to feel proud about as a fellow human being.
Today’s move back to daylight savings time will not transport us back to less contentious times. Unlike with Dorothy, there are no magic ruby slippers to click that will wake us out of this scary dream. However, that thought can and will no doubt coexist with the happiness of knowing that spring is on the way, even if other problems linger. In the spirit of George Harrison’s song, good day sunshine is on the way.
Copyright 2026, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved.
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