How time can be an intrusion but an indispensable part of our lives

A famous English musician and songwriter, John Lennon, once ‘borrowed’ a line from some long deceased philosopher, to put in a song on one of his albums. That kind of thing is rather normal in the world of artists, inventors and other creative people. Very normal, indeed. Almost as normal as exercising the art of stealing cell phones in our part of the world. And with his past in the long famed British band named The Beatles, where he was by far the most philosophical, as well as innovative and rebellious, of the guys, people across the West and beyond would buy the album, listen to the song and the line, feeling deeply ‘understanding’ and ‘in’ with the times and all that… The line itself would seem like nothing much special. It goes: “Life is what happens to you, while you’re busy making other plans”. Of course his fans across the world, would find it the simple, naked truth as applying to life. And how deeply absurd that is, come to think of it. Especially in the developed world, where day follow day as predicted and printed in the calendar, and everything is running on schedule. In fact, where both health-care and education is relatively free, as well as the social welfare check secured for those of misfortune, life is more often than not proceeding according to just what one is planning. And if you do not know what to plan for your life, there are education- and career consultants also freely available everywhere. Yes, in the welfare states, one can walk from cradle to grave without ever having to make much of a decision and, at the same time, without ever seeing much unexpected happening. In fact, life there has long since become so boringly structured, that for the past five decades, increasing numbers of people have joined the new wave of seeking inner and other values in life, than the mere material ones, through meditation, yoga and God only knows how many different positive outlook philosophies, being marketed there by more or less self-established gurus. Some of the more popular of such schools of thought have gained much popularity by teaching people to ‘expect the unexpected’. To put it more bluntly, in order to combat the boredom of their predictable, over-structured lives, people are going back to school, to learn how to open their eyes to the exceptions to the general rule of predictability otherwise governing them. The conclusion is, that if you want to see any truth in the attempt on philosophy of that song, you’ll have to do something to put it there yourself. That is, unless you are looking at life from the other end of the international scale of wealth. In Africa, life is indeed more often than not happening to you, in accordance with precious little of what you are actually planning. Here, those words more than apply. It has its advantages, of course. Fewer are the places in the world, where one’s life so easily can take unexpected turns for the better as in our continent. Unfortunately it can just as easily take an unexpected turn for the worse. There are two sides to any coin. But for the better or not - the lack of predictability is an integral in fact, inextricable part of life. So much a part of life, that, more often than not, one can start the day with even the simplest of programmes, only to find it hopelessly and helplessly disrupted and effectively non-existing only an hour later. Yet, rarely disrupted by anything beyond mere human control. Just disturbed beyond repair, typically by people who fail to respect time, fail to appear prepared for meetings or simply fail to appear at all, because they ran across a friend or relative or some other business contact, in which case the culture or the demands of seems to dictate, that you exchange greetings and news for at least half an hour, or just let any- and everyone else wait, while having lunch and ending up paying respect in the form of a visit to someone’s aunt, or relative for that matter. Often the thought leaps to mind, that in many African societies the concept of time appears alien—it is unpredictable. Or to be perhaps more precise: By seeing time, as what it basically seems to be – an abstraction by which the chains of events making up our lives are measured in a seemingly understandable way. But also an abstraction, basically intruding on any and every event in a way that more often than not seems to oppose any true desire for commitment in the form of just being there, going with the flow of whatever happens, and… surely the very concept of time is an annoying intrusion upon life in any true form. Ideally no culture with respect for itself should accept time to intrude upon its unfolding of the best of its sides. But unfortunately, the world as a whole is annoyingly structured around business rather than cultures. And only a successful integration between the two, can give us a chance in Africa for efficient economic development, as well as a way to efficiently interface with the global trade and economy and in fact globalization, the catchphrase of our time.

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How time can be an intrusion but an indispensable part of our lives