Time travel

IX-EN-PROVENCE, France -- "Time is money." "I'm out of time." "I wish there were more hours in the day." \nSuch statements indicate the kind of attitude Americans have toward time. Time is a commodity -- to be bought and sold at the cost of dollars and cents. When we go to McDonald's, we're not buying a Filet O'Fish. We're buying time by way of the convenience of not shopping for groceries, or cooking.\nThus, coming to France has been a bit disconcerting. Twenty-four-hour pharmacies -- 24-hour anything -- are nonexistent. The snail's pace of life here strikes me as strange, especially in a country that invented the Concorde, the TGV train (loosely translated as the PDQ) and the strongest coffee imaginable. Lunch brings everything to a standstill for a couple of hours in the middle of the day, while more are whiled away in the cafe, most of these spent waiting for the check. \nTo boot, everyone is late for everything ever -- although this is not entirely different from life in Bloomington.\nComing from fast-paced, convenience-based America, it's easy to chalk up these experiences to mere laziness or Gallic discourtesy, but in truth, we simply have two markedly different attitudes regarding time. While we are selling much of the world on the time-money archetype, France has militantly rejected it. \nThe alternate French perspective generates a surprising upshot. You might not get your consumer goods as quickly, but French folks don't seem to have the same impatient irritability that sits in the gut of every stressed-out American. Perhaps the most intriguing outcome is the consequent enshrinement of good ol' family values. Family vacation time is extended, maternity and paternity leave is mandatory and large nuclear families sit down to dinner together daily. Rev. Jerry Falwell would be proud.\nThis is not to say that the French model of time is without fault. To be sure, perennial tardiness and long midday meals dull the competitive edget. No one has ever accused the French of having a relentless work ethic. What we see here is a fundamental restructuring of priorities. The American capitalist mind might value an hour as a dollar, but the French mind values an hour as an hour, to be spent with friends and family rather than slaving away for a marginal benefit.\nSocialism might have saddled France with an impenetrable bureaucracy and impossible-to-maintain budget, but it has given the average Frenchman all the time in the world with the 35-hour work week. Besides, America hasn't exactly been doing too well in the bureaucracy and budget department either. \nI'm not saying the French way of seeing time is the best way; it's just a different way. America's insistent productivity has given us fantastic wealth in goods but desperate poverty in time. \nYet, despite my love for sitting in a cafe for hours and lying about on a Sunday afternoon, little is more deflating than wandering around at 3 in the morning trying to find somewhere to buy a Butterfinger. Oh well, I guess I'll have time when I get back.