My father was a gentle, calm, and wise man. “He never raised his voice except to give encouragement nor raised his hand except to greet a friend.” But in his gentleness he was also strong in his convictions. The principles by which he lived his life were not subject to compromise. Games, for instance, which he loved, must be played hard and to win but the spirit of sportsmanship was to be obeyed absolutely. Once, when I was about twelve-years-old and beginning to do well at tennis, in a fit of pique I cast down my racket and stamped about in a temper. After the game my father met me, took my racket and looked into my eyes and said very quietly that if I behaved like that again I did not deserve ever again to play games. More than 70 years have passed but the look from his steady grey eyes and the quiet words I have not forgotten.
My father had strong views on the value of time. As I grew older, I often got into conversations with him about the importance of not wasting time. He tried to make me as aware as he could of the fact that the passing hours one would never have again and must be spent constructively, honestly, considerately of other people, enjoyably too and always used to full effect. Those passing hours gradually added up into a lifetime and that lifetime would be judged, by man and God, according to how the hours had been measured, idly or in fruitful commitment.
My father expressed his concern for giving full value to time in a series of propositions, which he took very seriously. “Of all treasure time is the most precious,” “Procrastination is the thief of time,” and “Punctuality is the courtesy of kings” are three I recall in particular.
Procrastination is a deadly enemy of efficiency and achievement. If you had something to do, “just do it” was my father’s mantra, long before the Nike swoosh. Incompetence and lack of success could generally be equated with procrastination. Every day had its tasks and serial postponements of such tasks quickly led to a pile-up of commitments, which could never then be completed properly. My father loved to quote the stamp Prime Minister Churchill put on the memoranda he issued during the Second World War: “ACTION THIS DAY.” How else can anyone succeed?
My father abhorred unpunctuality. It wasted time, it denoted inefficiency, it was disrespectful and discourteous in the extreme, and it was a mark of the lackadaisical and the slap-dash. Over sixty years of experience in Guyana and the Caribbean and of becoming accustomed to our special concept of delayed punctuality has still not allowed me to forget the strength of my father’s conviction on this issue and so sometimes in his honour I make a point of arriving on time at events and meetings and even when, as I often do, I attend “late on time” with everyone else, my spirit still gives a quiver of regret, remembering my father.
Some years ago, I vividly recall the lesson it was meant to teach. The citizens of Ecuador synchronised their watches and clocks and embarked on a Campana Contra la Impuntualidad, a national crusade against lateness (“Inject yourself each morning with a dose of responsibility, respect and discipline,” a poster for the campaign exhorted.)
This might have seemed a hopeless cause, as it will always seem to be in Guyana. But it was a serious matter, nothing less than an attempt to change a culture of lateness and delay. The famous social psychologist Robert Levine, who devoted decades to studying people’s ideas about time, suggests that cultures can be divided into those which live on “event time,” where events are allowed to dictate people’s schedules, and those which live on “clock time,” where people’s schedules dictate events. Countries that live on clock time are more successful economically than those which do not. In the case of Ecuador one study showed that chronic lateness cost the country US$2.5 billion a year, a considerable amount when the GDP of Ecuador was US$24 billion. So it was worth embarking on the crusade.
Conversion from an ingrained bad habit is very difficult. Moreover in a country where nobody is ever on time it becomes rational to be late since there is no point in getting to an event or a meeting on time if no one is going to be there. And in Ecuador it had become customary for the higher-ups to show how much more valuable their time was by always arriving late – so would they now lower themselves to act differently? Well, even President Lucio Gutierrez, infamously unpunctual, vowed to participate in the crusade. His determination was somewhat spoiled in its effect when his spokesman, going on television to announce this vow, was quite a bit late.
I do not know if the crusade in Ecuador was successful. Perhaps Guyana should enquire as to what happened. If reports are favourable, then perhaps Guyana should also consider embarking on its own Campana Contra la Impuntualidad with a view to converting the whole Caribbean.
