Confound the man who first set up a sun-dial
to cut and hack my days into such wretchedly small pieces.
Paraphrased from: Plautus – 200 B.C.
My sympathies are completely with old Plautus. Yours, too, I imagine. The sun-dial was bad enough. Now we have ever-more refined ways of slicing our days into ever-more itsy-bitsy pieces. We are obsessed by time. We never have enough of it. We’re afraid of wasting it,
We wish we could save time, but we can’t avoid
spending it.
We say we’re saving time for this or that, when really we’re not saving time, but only scheduling it. When we fail to get done whatever we scheduled time for, we think we wasted time. Time is a hard taskmaster.
From time-cards to deadlines the pressure is unremitting.
The White Rabbit spoke for most of us when he sputtered, “No time to say hello, good-by, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late for a very important date” – as he scurried over
the hill.
Not many dates are really all that important.
Time before the sun-dial was mostly a matter of night & day, along with new moon to new moon, and with some fuss made about solstices & equinoxes. That was about it. It’s still that way in certain faraway places of the world.
I once saw a documentary about a remote tribe in Southeast Asia. They had a problem. The tribe had received news of an impending attack by a rival tribe. The threat was not to their particular village directly. It was planned for one of their related villages several miles upriver. The tribe pondered what to do. Long hours of leisurely discussion passed into days.
One tribesman was a little more concerned than the others. He had a cousin in the threatened village. While the rest dithered, he took action.
They needed a long dugout-canoe to carry the fighting men to battle. (For some reason, not explained, they were out of canoes). He set himself forthrightly to the task by walking about the village singing variations on this lyric – “Who, oh who, will help me make my canoe”. More days passed. Some joined in the song. Eventually a proper sized tree was selected. The cutting began. A squad of eight sang as they cut. Not one word of instruction was given or asked for. Some days later, a perfectly crafted canoe was ready to launch.
No one ever said, “hurry”!
I suspect they had no such word in their language.
Before setting off to battle, they received news that the threatened attack by the rival tribe had been called off – a few weeks earlier.
How often does, ”Go, go, go”, end in, “Never mind”.
Some cultures, less remote, have a similarly casual regard for time.
Years ago, I knew a guy, who called himself, Frank the Carpenter. Frank did a lot of work in inner-city neighborhoods. He was often the only non-black on the crew. His boss was black. One day the boss came up with an acronym Frank had never heard – WPT. The occasion was the announcement of start-up time for the next day’s work. One of the crew was singled out with special instruction, “ I want yo’ black ass here at six o’clock AM – and I mean WPT.
WPT meant White People’s Time, as opposed to BPT, which meant Black People’s Time. WPT meant, exactly on time. BPT meant, somewhere around that time.
I don’t know if these acronyms are used by all Afro-Americans, or only by those in the inner-city. Maybe they’re not used at all anymore. In either case, they’re wonderfully useful in pointing out the difference culture makes when thinking about time.
Climate also makes a difference. Time seems to slow down as it makes Its way toward the equator. I remember watching a lady sales-clerk in the Bahamas approach a customer from across the room. She walked with the stately floating grace of an eighteenth century schooner. Had I not known better, I would have thought I was looking at a film in slow-motion. There was no problem in it. The customer was served and didn’t seem in any greater hurry than the clerk.
There are times when, hurry, hurry, hurry is necessary, but not too many.
Rushing about is usually caused by poor planning and bulling managers. Then too, much of what we hustle and bustle to do might needn’t be done at all. The old saying, “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today”, is counterbalanced by,” Never do today what you can put off forever” - along with, “Haste makes waste”.
The often discussed stress of modern times is largely the result of trying to cram too much activity into too little time. Dis-ease follows in the form of ulcers, heart attacks, chronic anxiety, and general malaise. How many millions of pills are swallowed along with our cultural conviction that go, go, go, is the best way to get more done.
You could choose to slow down.
If you did, would many others follow your example?
Probably not. Too bad.
tick, tick, tick.
