TIME

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.