Time as We Know It, and As Others Live It
Time is often treated as universal, as though it speaks one language and moves at one speed. But across cultures, time behaves differently. Some societies live by the clock, measuring life in minutes, deadlines and schedules while others live by events, relationships and rhythms.
In many Western cultures, according to my findings, time is linear and urgent. The future is ahead, the past is behind and the present is something to move through quickly. To waste time is a moral failure. Productivity is proof that time is being used well. But where I come from, as an Ibibio girl from Akwa Ibom, in Nigeria, time does not rush us, we rather move with it.
Among the Ibibio people, time has traditionally been event-centred rather than clock-centred. Things happen when they are meant to happen. A ceremony begins when people arrive, a visit ends when conversations have said what they need to say. Time is not counted in hours but felt through moments.
Nature itself once told the time, still does, because my late grandma, till death never used a clock. She never bought the idea of having one. Morning was announced by cockcrow, afternoon by the sun overhead, evening by the return of bodies home and night by the chorus of insects. Farming seasons, rainfall, festivals and market days formed a calendar that repeated itself year after year. Time was cyclical, not a straight line racing toward the future.
This cyclical sense of time also means that the past is not distant. Ancestors remain present in memory, in rituals and in everyday language. Elders are respected here because they carry time within them. The past stands before us, visible and instructive, while the future unfolds quietly behind us, unknown and unworried.
Patience, therefore, is not laziness in my culture , it is rather wisdom. To rush is to risk carelessness. To wait is to show understanding. There is a deep belief that everything has its season and forcing time can break what should grow naturally. Of course, modern life has introduced clocks, calendars, deadlines and digital reminders. Like many cultures, the Ibibios now live at the intersection of event time and clock time. We attend meetings at fixed hours, yet weddings still stretch beyond schedules. We watch the time, yet we also watch each other.
Looking across cultures, this contrast becomes meaningful. Some societies ask, “What time is it?” Others ask, “What is happening?” Neither approach is wrong but each reveals what a culture values most. For us, time is not something to conquer but something to inhabit, respect and it is something that reminds us that life is not a race, but a rhythm.