Longer days of summer: Daylight savings time in US

When in India, I was used to the phenomenon of longer days in summer and longer nights in winter. But that was done entirely by nature for us, with the rising and setting of the sun. However, in the USA and also in many others countries of the world, people try to help this natural occurrence along. How? Well, simply by turning all the clocks ahead for the duration of summer and back for the winter.
It sounds a little confusing and till one gets used to it, it is confusing. This practice is known as Daylight Saving Time (DST). In simple words, it is the practice of setting the clock forward by one hour during the warmer part of the year so that evenings have more daylight. Most areas of USA currently observe the DST. The Daylight Saving Time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. The clocks are changed at 2am local time. A word play to remember this is ‘spring ahead and fall back’. This means in spring the clocks are moved ahead from 2am to 3am and in fall (autumn) they are moved back from 2am to 1am.
During spring and summer, if everything is done one hour earlier, it means that there will be more evening free time to enjoy daylight. People also think it will reduce power consumption by delaying the use of electric lights. But the results in this regard have never been very concrete.
Before phones got smart and started automatically changing the time twice a year for us, it was rather tedious to remember that our clocks are supposed to jump ahead or back, that too twice every year. Spring ahead and fall back are poor hints to remember. This was evident in the many missed meetings, missed school buses, missed flights; need I say more? A study even showed that there was an increase in the number of suicides on the Monday after the clocks were turned back. May be we are exaggerating the cons a little. But to someone suddenly introduced to this concept, it is very confusing and rather annoying.
It took me some time to understand that the only reason it was difficult was because I was not used to it and was holding on to one time as real. Neither of the two times is the actual time for there is no such thing as the absolute time. Time is just a concept. We decided to divide it into seconds, minutes, hours and days. We made clocks and turned them back and forth as per our convenience (or inconvenience). It's all in the mind, really.
So the next time you glance at that watch, don't frown at how late it is, smile at the whole idea of time and then go on ahead to catch that bus, flight, meeting or whatever awaits you.