By Phyllis Kepler
Jan 2002
In Mexico we like to label time problems simply as the “mañana theory”. But it is a much deeper, more complicated challenge that faces gringos in this society, geared to a slower pace of life than that of their neighbors to the north. It all begins with the simple question: What is time?
According to some, there is no such thing as time. It simply is all in the minds of man. But man has tried to get his life in order for thousands of years. Anthropologists have discovered prehistoric engravings of the phases of the moon on bones dating back more than 28,000 years.
Since those prehistoric days, time has developed in strange, very different patterns in various areas of the world, enabling people to live day by day within some semblance of order. Today, there are over forty different calendars in existence and the day does not always begin at midnight. Near the African equator where many still speak Swahili, there is what is referred to as Swahili time, meaning the day actually starts at 6 a.m. when the sun rises. While government officials and most businesses are on conventional time, taxi drivers, villagers and many of the lesser educated people, go by the traditional time patterns. A foreigner who orders a taxi for seven in the morning may discover it will arrive at one in the afternoon!
Arabs squeeze time together, and often ignore precise dates. It is due in part to their language, where verb tenses are vague, making it difficult to establish exactly when an event took place. For example, the mothers of both Moses and Jesus were named Mary, and many Arabs think of them as the same even though they lived some thirteen centuries apart.
Language definitely plays an important role in how time is perceived, and this attitude toward time, in turn, often dictates how we use our language. There are two very basic concepts that help set the cultural time patterns. The first is whether or not the people think of time as being cyclical, running in a circle, or linear, running in a straight line. Early man thought of it as going around in a circle, based on nature’s pattern of repeating the seasons, round and round again. It was the very early Hebrews who began to think differently and put time into a linear pattern. They looked ahead to the time when their people would reach the Promised Land, and this established the idea of a future. The early Christians picked up on this theory, and it spread into Europe and later the New World. People now realized the past influenced the present, which in turn influenced the future, and all this resulted in what we in modern times call “cause and effect”. The Japanese, for example, who have the cyclical view of time, do not apologize with a reason for their behavior. They simply say “I’m sorry.” But those in the West love to come up with excuses for their mistakes: “I’m late because I missed the bus.” It all goes back to the cause and effect theory, which in turn can be traced right back to the early Hebrews’ idea of time.
The second and very important time theory, one that probably gets the gringos and Mexicans into mental, if not emotional conflicts, is whether or not a culture thinks of the past, the present or the future as most important. What is new is better, In any cross cultural training class I conduct, I ask the participants to complete the phrase “New and…” Everyone shouts out “Improved!” Asians from East to West appear to value the past over the present or future and for different reasons. In East Asia it usually is based on historical principles, but as you travel westward into India and the Middle East, the basis is usually religious.
The Mexicans view the present as most important. They, of course, do not ignore the past for the past is highly venerated and future plans are not ignored, but the “here and now” often takes precedent in day to day living. There is often a hesitation to commit to a definite time, and they often inculcate comments with “God willing”. Many historians and cultural anthropologists believe this attitude may be rooted in hundreds of years of Arab occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. These people of the Middle East expressed similar attitudes through the expression of “Allah willing.”
For those geared toward a present orientation like the Mexicans, there is great spontaneity in their lives and an appreciation of daily pleasures. They do not take part in events because it might help their future, but simply because they enjoy being part in the happening. They often believe that luck and fate are important roles in their lives, and they look at those who put the emphasis on the future as being materialistic, cold and too concerned with getting ahead.