So daylight savings doesn't push your happiness button, you say?

If you are a resident of the continental United States of America, excluding a few self righteous pricks in Arizona and Indiana, you must have adjusted your clocks two weeks ago to be one hour behind, in order to compensate for the culmination of daylight savings. Daylight savings, for people who are not aware, means that every spring you set your clock an hour ahead, and every fall, you turn it back. And as you woke up on that sunday two weeks ago, you were probably complaining about it to your girlfriend, wife, dog, mother, immortal soul or whoever you woke up in bed with, about the sheer pain of carrying out this aggravating act this time of the year, every year. And no doubt, at the end of the day, you were experiencing the acute depression that one usually does when darkness falls an hour earlier than usual, causing you to worry about a more damaging electricity bill. I feel your pain, my friend, I really do.

In fact, I also feel the pain you felt way back in Spring when daylight savings began, and you woke up, also on a sunday and discovered that overnight, you had been transported into the future, that it was not 10:00 am but 11:00 am and that you had lost an entire hour of your life. Think about all the things you could have accomplished in that single hour, how the world might have changed for the better. Oh how you wish you could get that hour back. Yes, I sympathize. I have been through it too.

But see, if there's anything that blind irrevocable faith has taught us, it is that everything in life has a purpose. Look at it this way. Say you were a fresh off the boat graduate student, studying in UMass, Amherst, and you woke up one day, and the world was suddenly operating an hour ahead of you. But you had no clue that was the case. So you went to school an hour later than you should have, and by a freak of nature, a rogue asteroid struck the very building you would have been sitting in at that point in time, if not for the fact that you were sound asleep in bed, ignorant of the concept of daylight savings. Now how do you feel about it eh? Fat chance you say? Probability one in a zillion? Hey, it could happen. The earth is currently passing through an asteroid belt and the chances of that happening have dramatically increased. You say you don't believe me? Yeah, that is understandable, I guess, since I am usually not the most credible of sources. But even if I just made that up, there are other things that could happen, like lightning striking your building, or George Bush mistakenly landing on your workstation in a fighter jet to proclaim "Mission Accomplished" in the forthcoming war with Iran. There, see, now thats not so improbable. Moreover, statistically it has been proven that 100% of people who were not present at the site of a major disaster due to the fact that they were late, have survived the disaster. Think about that for a second.

But let me give you a real life example of something that could have happened to you, which actually did happen to me, which might help you reconcile yourself with the idea of daylight savings. Let's say it was november, and you were sitting in the Classic Rock bar in downtown Manhattan with your buddies, having a good time. Beer was flowing like wine, wine like water and water like sewage, which was actually flowing from underneath the door of the men's room and creating puddles at your feet. But you didn't care, because you were smoking a cigarette, heck everyone was smoking something or the other, the floor was covered with so many cigarette butts, you could hardly even see it. But then, as if on cue, the clock struck 4:30 in the morning and you realized, fuck, 4:30 was the time that bars in New York close down for the night, and you weren't even close to being in that contented glaze of inebriation that necessarily has to precede the conclusion of a night on the town.

You were stumped as to what should be done. Panic was setting in. You had driven all the way to New York from Boston, and you weren't even drunk. Fuck, what a waste of a saturday night. But then, as you were getting ready to smash the bottle you were holding on to your head, 'cause passing out is passing out right, irrespective of whether it's due to alcohol or a head concussion, someone around you said that daylight savings had just ended today. And then Lord Almighty, you realized that you had an extra hour to drink away to glory. Oh, how sweet that moment was, you remember, one of the happiest in your short career as an alcoholic.

And that is what you need to remember, every time you curse at the person who invented daylight savings, that it could save your life or your sobriety one day, when you least expect it. Because, everything has a purpose and daylight savings is just another thread in the rich tapestry of randomness that is your life.