It was just one of those nonchalant comments made by a friend:”I’d love to…if I could find the time…”
What ever happened to time anyway? I remember reading about how there used to be plenty of it around, enough for everyone to share…
Actually, I have found that in New England we seem to have gotten the short end of the hour hand when it comes to time.
Having traveled extensively in other regions and countries, I have come to the conclusion that for some reason time is shorter here than in other places.
For example, a year or so ago I went to England for a visit, 10 days to be exact, and found those 10 days seeming to stretch into two weeks.
I would get up in the morning, eat a leisurely breakfast and head out for the day to see various places. During that time I would stop at a pub, have a beer or two, some lunch, relax, then head out once more. There seemed to be plenty of time to do things.
Once having returned to my native state, however, suddenly there seemed to be no time for anything, owing to the fact that the lawn needing cutting, hay mowed, trim painted, garbage emptied, etc., etc. There seemed to be no time for anything.
Even in the southern part of the United States, Georgia to be exact, time is in abundance. Having traveled there, I found the people to be in no particular hurry to get anywhere.
They wandered through the supermarket examining various display items and selecting produce at leisure. At restaurants no one seemed to be on the fly or anxious about downing their food so they could get to wherever they were going.
At one point several years ago, I interviewed a young lady from France and asked her the usual questions about travel, the U.S., Americans, etc. Was there anything peculiar and unexpected about her visit to the U.S.?
“Yes,” she replied, looking for a way to explain what she had witnessed. “People here….they…eat in their cars!”
My eyebrows arched in curiosity.
“Why do they do that?” she continued. “That is like, like…eating in the toilet.”
She explained that the French would never do that. If you were going to eat, why wouldn’t you stop and eat in a café, or whatever? Why would you want to eat in a car?
Since then, I have made a point of not eating in my vehicle, if I can avoid it. I just get a funny feeling about it with images of eating in the bathroom passing through my imagination.
I did explain that we Americans eat in our cars to save time. But even as I did, my explanation had an echo of ridiculousness to it. She was right. Why can’t we stop long enough to enjoy lunch?
When I was looking at colleges as a high school senior, my friends and I went to Drew University in New Jersey on a visit.
We were amazed to find stores open 24 hours! We knew that would never happen around here. Why would someone need to go to a store at say 2 a.m.? Boy, we concluded, these people are nuts.
That would never happen here, we said. This is New England, a place of ayuhs and “can’t get there from here,” observations made by bib-overalled afficionados of rural culture, of neighbors leaning over backyard fences to talk about the weather or simply sitting on a back porch to watch the world go by.
That seems like eons ago now with the way things have changed.
Since then, obviously, something has gone drastically wrong with time in this area.
Take traffic, for example. People don’t drive. They race. We seem to be in such desperate haste to arrive at a destination that we are actually caught in a paradox, more often than not.
“Let’s hurry up and get there…so we can relax.”
We seem to be gearing our whole society to saving the next minute. Fast foods, fast service, “Jiffy” car lubrication, “Speedy” muffler service, “Fast Freddy’s”…we just can’t seem to go fast enough.
Apparently, there are other areas which are outside of the New England time warp problem. Several years ago, I went to Nova Scotia and found life moving slowly and enjoyably.
At five p.m. everything closed except the restaurants and movie theaters. Department stores were closed. Garages were closed. Grocery stores were closed. You had no choice but to relax.
“Stop and smell the roses” is fast becoming an archaic, quaint expression, which through apropos, we have tended to ignore as being unacceptable in today’s society.
We’re more apt to buy the roses, freeze dry them, and put them away so that when we get a chance, we can check them out.
Problem is, we’re the ones who too often end up getting freeze dried instead…
If anyone knows how we can get out of this time warp we are in, please let me know.
Meanwhile, in case you haven’t noticed by the way….it is spring …and it’s a perfect time to stop and smell the roses…while you still have the time to do that…
The above is an excerpt from the book Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sanity… by Dick Martin, a Glocester resident, former Burrillville High School teacher and contributor for NRI NOW.
Martin can be contacted at [email protected].
