People always ask me what the main differences are between
America and France. I never know what to say. I don’t know if I just blend in
nicely here or if I am impartial, but I don’t spend much time thinking about
the differences. I have melted in so thoroughly that I feel comfortable and at
ease here with all of it’s differences and similarities. Bu there is one
difference that I cannot look past or ignore. It is so obviously different to
me, and I would think to almost everyone in America. This thing is time. Time
is a very strange concept here. Time is not a number to live by, but a consequence
of the sun. One of the first things I learned how to say is ‘what is the time?’
A sentence, I quickly learned, that no one uses and is never heard. People
don’t ask for the time. They don’t constantly check their phones and watches
for the time to see what time it might be in the day. They don’t worry about
how long something is taking or how late or early something starts. The physical
number of time doesn’t matter to the French.
In America, we take pride in being busy. We take pride in
saying, ‘I am just so busy!’ To people who ask us how we are doing or what has
been happening in our lives. We love it when our phones tell us that tomorrow
we have 17 events and the first one starts at 5AM. We love to tell people how
many things we got done in a day, and the amount of tasks that we have
completed. I know that I have spent my entire life feeling this way. It’s been
like a drug to me.
In France, you don’t hear people saying they are too busy,
or that they have so much to do all of the time. Life isn’t complicated with
millions of events and responsibilities. In France, people don’t have schedules
or agendas that they are furiously adding things to. They don’t make lists of
tasks to complete and to continuously check things off of. They don’t worry
about what they have to get done that day, or what they didn’t get around to.
They don’t worry about making every minute of every day full of something to
do, especially if it involves running around like a crazy person with your head
chopped off with your lists flying out of your hands and your events piling up
on top of each other.
Here, the people take pride in saying WHO they spent their
time with, and not WHAT they spent their time doing. They don’t mind what the
event is, or what they are doing, or even where they are. The greatest
importance is the people around them. This could be neighbors, family, friends,
or complete strangers. They don’t mind
how long they give to these people, no matter who they are, to just sit and
talk over a drink. For hours and hours these people talk with each other about
everything and anything. Always having fun, always happy and content, never
looking at their watches or worrying about the time. People, communication, and
relationships. That is what is most important to the people in the South of
France. From the minute that you wake to the minute that you close your eyes
you are with people, communicating with people, loving and enjoying people. The
sun tells the time when eating and sleeping happens. Friendships tell the time
for drinking. The clock is a decoration with a number.
I am not this way. I have never been this way. But I want to
be this way. I am learning to be this way.
I have an amazing friend in my life who taught me about the
elements that are within us. Fire, water, earth and air. My entire life, I have
been living in the wrong element. As an earth, I have been fighting for structure,
control and stability. Earth views time on a transient level. She taught me,
that I am actually a water, who seeks change, motion and constant expansion.
Water views time on an eternal level.
Time has always been a difficult concept for me to grasp. I have had any anxieties and frustrations with time. I constantly think about time and how it is affecting me. I need to step away from how I used to view time, and start viewing time how my soul actually needs me to look at time. Eternally. That time is not an important number that needs to control me, but as a result of my life.
