Time is measured in the rhythms of our lives, the beating of the heart, the rising and setting of the sun and the tides, or the pulsing atoms that drive a digital time piece. They all take place without any effort on our part. The part we play is in the rituals that we build around these acts of nature. These sacred actions that we conscientiously create to circumscribe our lives. Some of these are our personal acts; some are actions in the community.
One we recognize this weekend, one goes generally unnoticed. We will ‘spring’ forward, a congressionally designated change of time originally promoted by Ben Franklin but now updated by three weeks to save energy. Many people will go through the ritual of updating all their programmable gadgets, grumbling but accepting the minor inconvenience for the public good. We go along with it because we get to stay out a little later at night in the summer time, a worthy sacrifice in ‘the grand scheme of things’.
The same day this year will also be International Women’s Day. It will pass by again, women in America going unacknowledged for their contributions to society. Originally proposed in 1910 by Clara Zetkin at a conference for working women in Denmark at a time when most women in the world did not have the right to vote, it was adopted and celebrated around the world starting in 1911. We have Mother’s Day to recognize women for the contributions they make to the family. Do we need to recognize all that women do in our society and around the world in countries where they lack the rights that they have here? Should women only be valued in terms of child bearing and rearing?
How we use and measure our time, are an important indicator of values that are important to a culture. What are you doing March 8th?
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