A Personal Time Bank

What can you do with that extra hour?

With the end of Daylight Savings and the clocks changing for winter, I've been thinking a lot about Time. You know that elusive concept that always seems to pass too slowly when you're young and way too fast once you've crossed the half century mark of your life. I mean, really. One minute you're walking down the aisle wearing a silk gown for a big ceremony, and the next you're being wheeled down the corridor wearing a paper gown for a small colonoscopy.

So, I've been thinking.  What if, instead of simply turning the clocks back an hour in spring and then gaining that hour in the fall, we could actually save time itself? If all those hours of Daylight Savings were actually saved in Personal Time Bank accounts. Every Daylight Savings we would add another hour, not to be used until we turned 40, or of an age when we could really appreciate time. Our hours would accumulate and then each fall when we turn the clocks back, we could go to our time bank and withdraw whichever hour we wanted.

Think about it. You could withdraw an hour from a day in high school when you followed your crush around, waiting for him to smile at you. To remind yourself of how young love felt. To help you relate to that hormonal teenage daughter sulking at you from across the kitchen table who wants only to send a text to her boyfriend and not have to listen to you bitch about her lack of respect.

You could withdraw an hour from the day your child was born and relive how it felt to cradle her in your arms. Before she learned how to talk back. Or maybe an hour from when you were laid up in bed with a broken bone. An hour that would remind you to slow down, take a deep breath. You don't need to be there for everyone, all the time.

If you were sad over something, you could take a ‘happy' hour from your bank to remind you of life's ups and downs. Perhaps withdraw an hour to help you through a tough situation. Or even an hour to spend with someone who is no longer with you.

You could revisit the days when we called each other to say hello instead of sending emails. When a text usually meant a book, a virus referred to something attacking our bodies, and a window was a large opening looking out onto the world.

And let's take it one step further. How about being able to withdraw against these hours whenever you needed a few extra minutes to meet a deadline? Instead of rushing from the market to the soccer game to the doctor's to the office, you could borrow from your Time Bank and make that tightly squeezed day, just a bit easier. Or maybe even trade hours with your friend to see how it really feels to walk in someone else's shoes. Oh, how we could learn to stop judging and just accept each other. Best of all, we could loan hours to someone whose life is being cut too short.

If only this were possible. But I know it's not. So, maybe I'll just use this extra hour for a little ‘me' time. How about you?