Thursday, May 28, 2015

Time: A Perspective

My younger sister and I were messaging each other through WhatsApp the other day, and I was telling her about how I was feeling rundown. She asked what was going, so I told her about school, marathon training, and other things that were wearing on me. When we ended the conversation, my sister reminded me not to run myself ragged.

Don’t run myself ragged.

The irony in those words struck me when I saw them on my phone’s screen. After all, I was in the Peace Corps in rural South Africa.

A Time to Slow Down
Serving as a volunteer with the Peace Corps is often a time in a person’s life when s/he has fewer responsibilities, and, thus, more free time. I remember in an email exchange with my Country Director she told me to enjoy the slower pace of life and the gained free time. The first few months I arrived at my site, I had loads of free time; more than I knew what to do with. I tried to embrace it. Well, as anyone who knows me knows that I struggle with idle time. I’ve been that way dating back to high school (and perhaps even longer, but my parents would know better than me).
Fetching Water from the Tap (note: literally a few drops at a time)
Filling Time
After a few months, I found ways of getting involved in my school. It wasn’t difficult. There were lots of opportunities from teaching (my main reason for being here) to teaching educators how to use computers to coaching learners how to play Ultimate Frisbee to launching a school library and more. Outside school, I started training for a marathon. I also started making friends with locals and spending time with them. These were all good things because, well, they were life-giving. But I have started to gain a sense of the shadow side to all of these involvements.

Further, it’s not just the involvements that have a shadow side, but also the exorbitant amount of time it takes to complete household chores. Let me illustrate… Doing the laundry. Back in the US, when I wanted to do the laundry, I threw clothes into the washing machine, added detergent, turned the dial, and started the machine. After maybe 35 minutes, I moved the clothes to the dryer, turned the dial, started the machine, and, after maybe 50 minutes, all I had left to do was fold the clothes. Although the machines took about 90 minutes to run through their cycles, I spent approximately 30 minutes actively playing a part in doing the laundry. (Keeping in mind, I didn’t have to stand by the washer and dryer while they worked their way through the cycles.)
Laundry Soaking in a Bucket and a Rinse Bucket Ready and Waiting
Let’s take the same chore and look at it now that I’m here in rural South Africa. First, the time of the day matters as well as the weather. If I start too late in the day, my clothes won’t dry in time before the sunset, and, if it’s anything other than sunny, my clothes won’t dry regardless because the humidity is thick. This all matters because I hang my clothes to dry on a clothesline. After living here for almost a year, I’ve learned that I can dry two “cycles” of clothes on the line if I put the first cycle of clothes up no later than 10:00am (and the weather conditions are suitable). This means that I have to start doing laundry around 8:00am because I have to handwash everything. As you can see, a chore that used to take me about 30 active minutes has now become one that takes a few active hours.
The Clothesline
The Amount of Time
I use doing laundry as an example of the shadow side of time because it seems like all chores take much longer here: washing dishes, buying groceries, fetching water, etc. Other actions take longer as well: getting to and from school, cooking, bathing, etc. Adding these chores and other necessary actions to the involvements I mentioned above, a lot of time gets used over the course of the week.
Bathing Charlie (definitely one of his least-favorite activities)
The totality of my involvements here pales in comparison to the totality of my involvements back in the US. But there’s one key factor affecting the two – the amount of time.

I’m not alone in my struggle about time. Lots of Americans would have the same struggle because we’re met with messages that remind us that “time is money” and “carpe diem”; not to mention the boasting that occurs when people talk about how busy they are. What is an American to do if s/he finds her/himself in a situation like me? If there’s a shadow side to time, there must be a light side, and, if so, what does it look like?

The Light Side
Someone close to me in college introduced me to a Buddhist named Thich Nhat Hanh. I appreciated the accessibility of his teachings and reading his works helped me to discover the practice of mindfulness. One lesson in particular is about washing a dish. While washing dishes, does one think about washing the dish or is one’s mind off somewhere else? If one’s mind is somewhere other than the dish, how does one know one has actually washed the dish? (The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh) Without getting too heady, the moral in Thich Nhat Hanh’s lesson is that if we aren’t present in the moment then we aren’t meaningfully aware of our reality. In other words, we aren’t being mindful.
Drying Charlie (He's dry, but also in shock from the bath - poor puppy.)
How does mindfulness connect to the light side of time?

I mentioned above that I struggled with the amount of free time I had when I first arrived to my site. Now, I’m struggling with the amount of time my involvements occupy. Time for me seems to have swung like the pendulum of a clock. In order to feel more of the light side, I need to swing the pendulum into more of an equilibrium by weighing the importance of my involvements and asking how they bring meaning into my life and the lives of those around me. Some things, like chores, aren’t going to go away (despite how much I’d like them to), so I have to embrace them as best as I can as an opportunity to practice mindfulness. Further, mindfulness extends beyond chores and into the relationships I have with others and the impact we have on each other. When I leave South Africa, I want to look back on the friendships I gained and the change we were able to make together and not the laundry list of things I accomplished.

A Time to Embrace
Being more mindful will enable me to become centered, which in turn will help me from running myself ragged. I can begin to become more mindful by trying to embrace the time it takes to do things here. In doing so, I hope to feel the light side of time and the warmth of the light that comes with developing meaning from relationships with others… as well as the meaning that comes from handwashing my shirts.

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Here are some links related to Thich Nhat Hanh’s works if you’re interested in reading more:
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