Time

Time is strange. We can measure it, but we are never really quite sure what it is or where it is taking us.

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Time is strange. Photo. By User:S Sepp (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

When I was in my early twenties, I lived for one year in the Northern Province of Sudan. We were surrounded by desert but our little village near the river Nile was green and beautiful.

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I lived near the town of Dongola in the Northern Province of Sudan. Photo. OCHA [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Even so, it was a long bus trip to the capital in Khartoum; I often felt isolated and cut off from “civilization”, trapped with rather backward people. It was worrying when I asked about the bus schedules and discovered that the buses often did not actually arrive and leave at the times they were supposed to arrive and leave. I was even more concerned about the attitude of the locals; they didn’t seem to think that the looseness of the schedule was a serious problem. They even suggested that I was being silly and that I should just relax and enjoy myself more!

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I was living in an amazing place but I just couldn’t relax and enjoy myself. Photo. By Photographer: B N Chagny [CC BY-SA 1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Thinking back on my experience, I wasted a lot of time and made myself feel bad by telling myself that the locals should change; I thought they should be more like me and take things like schedules more seriously!

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I simply could not understand why the locals were not more worried about the bus schedules. I’m sure I would have enjoyed myself more if I could have been more like the locals.  Photo. Church of the granite columns.

There are actually psychological studies that suggest that certain Arab cultures have a less structured sense of time than western cultures. It seems that some people find it difficult to accept a rigid schedule, for example. It seems that people in westernized countries (including Japan) tend to regard time as a commodity: time is money. It seems that Africans generally do not have this view of time.

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It seems that Africans often have a different sense of time compared to westernized people. Photo. Todd Schaffer [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In Swahili, there are two words that indicate time: sasa and zamani. The word sasa indicates present time and creates a sense of urgency. The word zamani indicates the past but with a strong sense of time as a connector of individual souls. Time has a stronger meaning as a cycle rather than a straight line.

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For many Africans, it seems that time feels more like a cycle than a straight line. It also feels like something that connects you to other souls. Photo. Todd Schaffer [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

People in rich countries tend to feel dissatisfied with lack of time and feel frustrated as a result. People who experience time pressure usually move faster than people who are not worried about lack of time. In one experiment, Japanese were found  to be the fastest walkers.

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Who feels the most pressure from time? Photo. Todd Schaffer [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Check out the PowerPoint Slides here.