Sense of Time

When reading the conversation between Edward and Elizabeth Hall, I was particularly interested in the topic of time.

I think it is really interesting to see the relationship between culture and sense of time. Hall points out:

"Our culture happens to organize most activities on a time base. We talk about time as if it were money; we spend it, save it or waste it. Time patterns are so deeply embedded in our central nervous system that we can't imagine getting along without them" (13). 

Where our culture is constantly aware of the time and legitimately could not function without it, other cultures are quite the opposite. Other cultures are "polychronic"(13). They believe that each individual creature or object has its own time structure and it should be treated individually. For instance, as explained by Hall, if the Hopi Indians were to plant corn that did not grow as efficiently as it should, they would just let it be and accept it for how it is. In our culture, however, we would try to create a new type of corn that would grow more efficiently and abundantly. 

This idea of time can relate to everyday life. If there is one concept I learned when going to Italy, it was their sense of time was incredibly different than ours. While we ate dinner at the "american time" of around 7pm, their dinner wouldn't start until 11pm. You could literally walk down the streets and see all the americans sitting down to eat at around the same time, and then a few hours later the native italians would come out to dinner. Dinner itself took forever to be completed because they would wait for longer periods of time in between each course. At first, this was a shock to me but as we stayed in Italy longer, our dinners became more relaxed and we were able to really sit and enjoy each other's company longer. We even started going to dinner later. 

I never realized how sense of time could truly affect a culture, but after experiencing it myself and reading about it in this article, I've come to realize the difference time structure can make. I really do envy the more relaxed time structure of other cultures, because I feel it reduces stress and anxiety overall. Maybe we should all take some time to slow down.