Mediaculture column

The six of us sat on the wooden dock in the hot sun, waiting for a water taxi to take us north to meet some friends of our hosts. The taxi was due to arrive at 5 p.m., and it was now 5:10.

We chatted, and I wondered aloud if maybe they forgot. Wayne, one of our hosts, said, “They’ll come sometime.”

I reminded myself this was Belize, where people say, “It is what it is.”

The taxi showed up, and we were on our way, sans life jackets or railings on the boat. No OSHA here.

Jeanne and I came here in late June with four good friends. Two of them owned a condo on the beach on Abergris Caye, an island off the coast of the Belize mainland. We spent 10 days relaxing, reading, talking, seeing some sites, meeting new people, eating good seafood (snapper, grouper, coconut shrimp), enjoying the relaxed pace of life.

I was in the midst of a three-month sabbatical that this magazine graciously provided me, and while I spent much of it reading and writing (including some during my days in Belize), this time in another country and culture provided a helpful perspective.

A month earlier I had read the book In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré (HarperOne, 2005) and wrote about the need to practice patience in our fast-paced culture. In Belize I was able to experience a different pace, and I realized in a greater way how the surrounding culture affects our behavior and expectations.

Our cell phones didn’t work there, we didn’t have access to email and didn’t watch TV. We made plans and went places, but we didn’t have to be there at a certain time. If we were meeting someone for dinner at 6 p.m., that meant between 6 and 7 in Belize time.

This experience fit with Honoré’s book, which describes our addiction to speed and the growing slow movement that tries to address it. He writes about “time-sickness” and “the age of rage.”

In Belize no one seemed to be in a hurry. Transportation beyond walking was by bicycle or golf cart, with a few exceptions. And the pothole-filled roads slowed down what traffic there was. The roads also had thick ropes laid across them in places. I asked Wayne about these.

“Speed bumps,” he explained. I laughed. Unnecessary.

I could feel my body relax the longer we were there, which made me realize the tension I lived with normally. (And I live in Newton, Kan., not New York City.) I lay on the sandy beach at times under a palm tree, looking out over the ocean, watching the frigates, gulls and pelicans wafting over the water. (I realize this sounds like a beer commercial.) It seemed easier to release control of the world’s (and my) problems to God.

I realize I was there comfortably as a relatively wealthy American, but the Belizeans I met seemed to have this relaxed attitude as well. They knew what I needed to learn (and what I was writing about in my sabbatical project): We are not in control. It is what it is.

One afternoon, when we went snorkeling, the electricity went off for three hours. The local electric company just turned it off, to save power, I imagine. Jeanne asked Pam, “What if you were baking a cake at the time?” Pam said, “You just deal with it. It is what it is.”

How refreshing yet how hard for me as a well-off American who is used to getting my way. My own culture reflects what Honoré calls “a cult of speed,” and because we live in that kind of culture, we are easily sucked into that kind of behavior and perspective.

Patience, on the other hand, is a central virtue and concept in Mennonite spirituality. Behind patience lies the theological truth, the belief, that our life—all life—is a gift of God and that we are not in charge. To live ungratefully and act as if we are in charge, as if everything depends on us, is to be, among other things, impatient. We need to learn from Belizeans how to accept what is and wait.