Concept of Time

I’m hoping that this typical Sunday is the last of its kind for quite some time. It’s rather windy, with perfectly scattered rain clouds that taunt me; not so frequent that there isn’t sunshine but it doesn’t last long enough for a walk or basketball. I’ve got a to-do list that stretches ad-infinitum but none of it has to be done today and I lack the support to try something outside my experiences of what works. I like reading, researching, embroidering, and playing the “my future” game but I feel guilty taking time on these things before the sun sets.

One of the changes I see in myself since coming to Ukraine is my relationship to time. I still don’t fully comprehend or react the same way that the people I live and work with do, but I’ve certainly adapted to it and it affects how I go about implementing anything new at site.

There’s a mid-career teacher at my school that has a calendar inside her drawer. Every day she crosses off the day with a big red x, voicing a “thank god” or “oh god”, depending on her mood. She alerts everyone in the room that there are 3 days to the weekend or 2 weeks to break. At first I thought she must really hate her job but I don’t think that’s it anymore. I don’t know what she’s counting down to; perhaps her death, perhaps a ritual to the cycle of months of the year.

One comment outsiders make about Ukrainian society is its obsession with the past, particularly the nostalgia that it creates. I certainly have. On the other hand, there are moments when I’m caught off guard by the not distant future. For instance, last month I proposed a change to the curriculum for a class to make it more in-line with national testing that was just announced (whole other topic). The response to my proposal was that soon it would be April, and after April comes May, and in May the school year is over. So, why should we start something new now? Change certainly does take time. I’m always thrown off by this forward counting. It happens with age too, often if you ask someone older than a toddler how old they are, they tell you the age they will be at their next birthday. A 13 year old is 14, a 35 year old is 36 and so on. It’s almost as though the present doesn’t exist.

This approach is like a red flag for Peace Corps volunteers, we can easily point at the “problem”. We can show how to properly plan. Over the course of Peace Corps’ presence in Ukraine, the goal of passing along skills and making processes more sustainable has had successes, but much more slowly than someone on the outside would expect. The notion that tomorrow is far away and that we should wait for action until then is deeply ingrained. Problems are patched over, the root never pulled out or the idea of “prevention” ever instilled. I can’t even imagine the horror an efficiency expert would experience here.

Where am I going with this? What conclusions can I draw? I guess I want to stress the absence of seeing now as the moment. The sacred nature of the life-cycle as fate: you’re a child, you become a beautiful young woman, you marry before your looks go, you have a child that is raised by your mother because you’re too young to be established with a career, you establish yourself at your job and endlessly fuss over your child in hope of success, the child enters a university and marries, a year later your husband dies of a heart-attack, you raise your child’s child, you retire at 55, with retirement you watch and scold your grandchild until your heart gives out as well.

I’m not trying to be disrespectful, this is life. It can’t be altered unless contaminated by outside influences. I’m in a way a poison, showing off my checklists and desire to be constantly evolving. I fail to always be culturally sensitive, to be compassionate.