Having recently returned from working in Africa I’ve been thinking about time. A lot.
In my last two posts I wrote about a great Utne Reader article called Our Schedules, Our Selves: Are you more important than your appointment book? by Jay Walljasper and Stephan Rechtschaffen’s article called How to expand time.
In the same Utne issue Lynnika Butler writes about Living on Tokyo Time.
“In the West, we save time, spend time , invest time, event kill time- all of which implies that it belongs to us in the first place. The Japanese grow up with a sense of time as a communal resource.”
That’s a mind bender. Time as a communal resource?
Language shapes our thoughts. In Japanese you receive free time, as opposed to taking it.
Free time (hima) is something that only comes to you when all of your communal duties have been fulfilled.
Interesting notion.
What would you do with received time?
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