The most wanted commodity

What's the world's most wanted commodity? Oil? Rice? Wheat? Corn? Water? Gold? Ore? No. It's time.

Australia looks quite small and harmless on the map, but the distances here are unbelievable. We are in Cairns now, the northernmost point of our itinerary. The non-stop bus trip from Brisbane would take around 30 hours. Train from Brisbane to Rockhampton took us the entire day (ok, so it was an extremely slow train). We took a night bus from Rocky to Airlie Bach and finally made a 10-hours journey to Cairns. My bottom might have been a bit numb during the journey but my mind was active and working on several things, one of them being the topic of this post, namely time.

Gazing at the ocean makes you forget all about time

Long distance travel makes you think about time. Western people are always in a hurry from point a to point b, preferably via points c and d to maximize efficiency. When I was living in Korea I often ran to the subway even though I knew the next train will arrive in 2 minutes. Everyone else was running, too. I've been working in a company where being 3 minutes late is seen as a transgression requiring corporal punishment. If an event in a Western country starts 12 o'clock, it means 12 o'clock and all the participants are there, except for the Finns who were there 11:53 as in our culture we value being ahead of time. Having left the time-crazy world behind for a while, I've noticed that our existence is cursed by the accuracy of the Swiss watches.

You know what? 100 years ago Japan was a backward developing country. Time meant nothing to the citizens of old Japan. The same thing can be said about many other countries that are today seen as the successful, well performing, world leading countries. The Koreans developed their busy lifestyle in the aftermath of Korean war and the following hectic years of rebuilding the country. In the mists of time people used to speak about lazy, thieving Germans and not so long ago even corporate America was only an underdeveloped overseas colony of Great Britain. The people in these cultures had plenty of time but then, along industrialization, some crafty people noticed that time is the easiest commodity to buy and sell because it's a renewable resource so we can't really run out of it. And so it all began.

Cairns beach

Think about your own life. You sell 8 hours of your day to the highest bidder, at a  price that's either quite good or not so good. The company in question may buy your time for a short period of time, like 3 months, or some lucky people get a permanent position, which actually means that they've sold their entire life to the labor market. In our free time we are hopelessly busy as we try to cram all the thing we really enjoy doing to what's left of our 24/7. A person's worth is measured against how busy they are. The busier you are, the more successful you are. It's trendy to be busy. Western people scorn the people who still have time but aren't we all just jealous of those who have something that we would like to have?

Night falls and fruit bats arrive to Cairns 

We speak in a disdainful manner about the "lethargic people of developing countries" who "waste their time" sitting idle in the shadow of a tree. The sad fact is they probably enjoy their life more than we enjoy our fast paced, scheduled and fully booked life. A plane departs from Madagascar when it's full. A European plane leaves when it's scheduled to leave or heads will roll and passenger will sulk all the way to the destination. I can only imagine that the lucky people who still got some time and enjoy their life, laugh at us from the bottom of their hearts. What does it matter if someone's 3 minutes late? It's not the end of the world, quite possibly the world doesn't even notice such a minor incident. Does it really matter if someone misses the train? The next one will arrive in 2 minutes. There are places where the bus runs once a week and that's considered "often". There are still countries where people have time and I think that's great. In our world our time is sold out the day we are born.