Why Aren't There 60 Hours In A Day?

60 seconds in a minute...60 minutes in an hour... 24 hours in a day? Who on earth came up with something like that? Well, you may say, because it's a twelve based system and it's been that way for a long long time. Or you may say, that, to create a 60 hour day, would mean there would be around two sunrises and sunsets and that it would be very unhealthy, considering we'd have to stay awake that long. To the first, yes, but there wasn't daylight savings time until World War I. To the second, simple answer: make the second hand go faster. Why does it go at the speed that it does? You could easily get 60 hours into our usual 24 hour day if you just speed up the second.
Is this a ridiculous thing to talk about? Yes. Do I even have arguments in favor of changing our perspective on time? No, not exactly. But, the fact that it could be changed is very fascinating. The defiance to the world is refreshing. And it does bring up a main point: why do we have hours and minutes and seconds at all? Why do we measure time, and in the way we do?

Personally, I wouldn't speed up the second hand. There's something very calming and serene about its slow and yet constant tick. You can always rely on the second hand.
Time is a very interesting thing. An event can feel to us as if it happened decades ago, and yet it can feel like yesterday. We look back over years and events and seasons and feel both a longing for them and a sense of awe at how life has changed. We look to the future, knowing that it's made up of days like today and that it will come and go like today, and yet we still look to it. And then there's Today: the here and now. Every minute we count is, the next, something we look back on. Today is so easy to forget, every moment so easy to let pass.

Autumn is the most beautiful of seasons, I am convinced. It brings back reflection on past seasons, especially as it leads up to winter and a new year. Autumn is simply enchanting.

"I'm so glad that I live in a world where there are Octobers."

--Anne of Green Gables

"The increasing scarlet and yellow tints around the meadows and the river remind me of the opening of a vast flower-bud; they are the petals of its corolla, which is of the width of the valleys. It is the flower of autumn, whose expanding bud just begins to blush."

--Henry David Thoreau

 "My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are as beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane."

--Robert Frost

(the pictures were taken by my brother on Long Island, NY)