Kids do normally put the brakes on busyness in my experience (or massively increase the frustration in other’s experience – from my observation).

Pacific Island cultures have a different approach to time to. A friend of mine had a friend getting married on a Pacific island. My friend rang to congratulate three days after the date of the wedding, to ask how it had gone. The answer was, “Well, if it doesn’t happen tomorrow, I’ll start worrying”. I find this approach more attractive (except in the queue for the supermarket checkout).

Thanks for your comment.

I am not sure that people everywhere and throughout history try/have tried to cram as much as possible into 24 hrs – I think the stress referred to in different systems of healing might have be caused by quite different circumstances than one of frantic ‘busyness’….

I remember one morning (about 15 years ago) wanting to get a bus out of a small village in Morocco to the nearest large town. I saw a large crowd of people hanging out with their bags in the main road and asked when the bus was due. The answer stopped me in my ‘busy’ tracks – it was “today” !

Long time ago I used to work at a canmaker’s factory, which was in a rural town about one hour drive from our capital city. In that little town, people’s siesta was sacred. But the guys who were putting up the plant were all foreigners and not used to the slow pace of the “siesta” lifestyle. So, sometimes, they needed something as simple as a bolt or a screwdriver, at around 3 pm, and everything in town as closed because people were taking their nap. This made forgein engineers pretty mad. They refused to understand they were in a small town in a lost country in South America. So, one day, when one of them had a “rant party” attack and strongly complained about this “issue,” I pointed out to him that every culture is different. Even within one same country. You’ve got people from the busy fast-paced larger cities and people from the rural areas or smaller towns who live at a slower pace. My country was no exception, it worked in the same way others countries do.

I live right downtown, in a 12 million people city (capital city)- so you know, extremely fast paced place. Still, since I quit my job and started working by and for myself, I managed to build my own bubble of peace, and my home is like a sanctuary of peace and harmony.

Maybe that’s why when people drop by to visit, they stay as long as they can :) We can build our lives just the way we want them to be, at least in those cultures wher we have options to choose from.