E-Kantipur

‘Time is making fools of us again,” J.K. Rowling writes. Time is a constant pressure. Between the fast approaching May 28 constitution deadline, the start of a new school year and the beginning of 2067 BS, Nepal is currently highly concerned about time. What exactly is time? Does it affect us negatively or positively? How do we make the most of our time?

Nepali time is slow and leisurely. Nepali time ambles on like a grazing horse, nibbling each plant and smelling each flower along the way. I have grown accustomed to this way of treating time, though its pace has affected the way that I live my current life. With indefinite electricity hours, lots of work at home, and families to provide for, Nepal wakes up with the sun. This early rising gives way to morning work and early bedtimes. Author Robin Sharma suggests that we wake up earlier and join the ‘five o’clock club’. More so than anywhere I have lived, people here in Nepal are a part of the five o’clock club. Our personal relationship to time is manifested in various ways depending on where we live.

My friends Nicole and Justin just went back to the U.S. after spending 10 months in Nepal. The year went quickly, but the hours had another quality to them. They had different hours of productivity, different hours in which to shower, to eat and to entertain. The way in which Nicole and Justin lived their lives completely changed in Nepal. They had lived in New York before coming to Kathmandu, and were used to things moving faster and stores opening late. New York is a city that is open 24 hours a day, a city in which insomniacs can find normalcy. People stay out until the time that people in Nepal wake up. If time’s definition and expression is variable for various people, how can we define it?

Time is a continuum; it continues without a break from the past to the future. In this world, we do not have a minute when time does not affect us. We cannot turn the clock back; even if the clock stops, time does not. Nor can we go back in time to change decisions, to alter outcomes, or to lengthen our earthly life. No matter how strongly we wish for it, time does not stop.

Our relationship to time can cripple and paralyse us. We can allow ourselves to be run by the clock, to count the minutes and the seconds. We can obsess over how one moment affected all of our subsequent ones. One of the most difficult aspects of life is figuring out how to make the best use of our time. What things deserve us spending our finite minutes of life on them? And how can we have an effective relationship with time?

Time management is always something that I have excelled at, but only when I am extremely busy. Here in Nepal, with a less structured schedule, I find myself being lax about managing the 1,440 minutes that constitute each day. Before, each minute was planned and organised: each minute equalled commuting time or gym time or work time. I wrote on the subway; I ate lunch walking to work; I ate dinner weekly on the Metro North train to run my class at Sing Sing. There was never enough time. Every minute of those 1,440 minutes in each day were scheduled, accounted for and cherished.

Here in Nepal, I still cherish each minute, though I have the luxury of not scheduling every single one. But still, I try to use the unscheduled time productively. Time is finite, and we should make a more positive use of our time.

Using time effectively can be a process of refinement, a conscious decision on what is or is not important to dedicate our hard-earned minutes to. We can spend our leisure time doing more important tasks and executing creative ventures. We can do more things with our families and we can get off the computer and pick up a book. When we waste time we waste our brainpower. If we control our own time, then time will not control us.

Making lists is a wonderful way to help control our own time; they provide a way for us to get small things accomplished in between our larger tasks. With time we grow. And as we grow, we should continue to learn. This learning includes learning what things are worthy of spending our time on. It doesn’t matter if you are living in Nepal or in the U.S.; time is not an infinite resource. We will do ourselves a disservice if we waste time, and while looking back on our lives, wishing we would’ve planned our minutes, hours, and days differently. Do not let time make a fool of you.

hannahglilly@gmail.com

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