In the past several weeks, I’ve attended a couple of events. One was a wedding anniversary party, and the other was a birthday party. In both cases, I came late —- as in, very late — and very embarrassing!
It’s really not like me to be late since I am one of those people who are obsessed with being on time. Lateness is one of my pet peeves, and for me to be late is something that I take seriously as a flaw in my judgment.
Yes, I admit I am an obsessive-compulsive person when it comes to time. The reality is that “time” only passes once — it’s one of those arbitrary things that man invented but can’t control or tame. It has a life of its own moving forward, without looking back how it went.
My obsession with time often gets me in trouble. But as the saying goes, the end justifies the means. To allow time to pass us by without any sense of responsibility, in my opinion, is an injustice to our existence, a little hyperbole to say the least, but very fitting in my obsessive world.
My girl scout training drove me to treat “time” with tremendous respect. In many instances, when I meet people for an appointment, I end up waiting instead, as opposed to being waited for.
I don’t want people waiting for me, it doesn’t feel right, and it’s just rude. I consider my time and others’ just as important, with equal weight regardless of what’s at stake.
So the question is, what makes some think (when they come late) that their time is more important than others’? Or perhaps they don’t even think about other people’s time.
And that is precisely my point: it is unthoughtful to think that your time is more important than others’ or maybe that their time is not important. But hey, that’s just me and my obsession with time.
Here in the Philippines, we tend to acquire the “lateness” habit as part of our culture. Even in business situations where in this day in age it is totally unacceptable behavior to be late.
Lateness is still part of the expected practice. I was told many times here to learn to adapt to the culture as in “when you’re in Rome, do as the Roman do”.
I’m sorry, but lateness is just bad manners where one should never learn to adapt in any culture in my book. Not only is it rude, it is also bad form to keep people waiting, and for what end exactly?
I have experienced seeing people coming in late to a class or to a meeting or to a seminar. I’m not talking about students coming in late for a class, I’m talking about teachers coming in late to their class!
What kind of example are we teaching our students if we as teachers can’t even demonstrate the importance of being on time? My point is simply this, what is the purpose of having a scheduled appointment if the appointment is actually not being followed? And what is the main reason for having to wear a wrist watch aside for just aesthetic purposes?
Funny that when it comes to lunch time, a snack break, or time to go home from work, people tend to follow the exact schedule. Some even do it a half hour in advance, especially when it’s time to go home from work. That never ceases to amaze me!
Today our lives are driven according to schedules of time. Be it in business, personal, or world events, we operate under the control of time. It can be good and bad. The clock doesn’t tick back, it continues to move sequentially without regard to what has transpired. Nothing stands still in time. Even the most profound experience we encounter, when time passes, is no longer exactly the same as we experienced it the first moment.
In a more poetic sense, time for me is sweet and sorrowful. Sweet because in that moment of bliss, it touches the soul beyond comprehension — it’s like listening to great music that moves you without words to describe.
Sorrowful, because the moment of that same bliss is impossible to recapture. It only stays in the memory but cannot be exactly the same, no matter how much you try to remake it. But in the end, what really is important is that we experienced that poignant moment even only once. And we hold on to the hope that time will be kind enough to allow us to experience it one more time.
As Marcel Proust (one of the greatest 20th century writers) once wrote, “The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train.”
