“Mazunte time” is what we call the phenomenon of the passage of time in Mazunte, the sweet Oaxacan beach side town my husband and I like to go to every once in a while for a change of pace. Who came up with the term, that’s unknown. But the point is for some reason, time really does move slower in Mazunte. The rapid time change when we make it back to Mexico City always takes me by surprise, such that it got me thinking—how do we characterize time?

I don’t even mean that it seems to move slower in Mazunte. I know science and logic would disagree with me, but in Mazunte, I sincerely feel like the meaning of each hour is tripled. Somehow, you get more done, you enjoy more, you have more chance encounters—you just have more chances in a day. You never look down and your watch (if you are even wearing one) or phone and think, “wow, where’d the day go?” It’s quite the opposite. You’re always amazed by how time seems to crawl. Boredom could even be a problem. And it’s for all these reasons I genuinely think that time moves differently in different places.

In Mexico City, time moves faster, but not as fast as in California, where I go to visit my parents. In California, time moves at a pace that’s completely unlike Mazunte. I go to make a cup of coffee in the morning and read a book—next thing I know, it’s noon. 

I realized recently that I have a frustrating relationship with time. Namely, I feel like I am always late. 

It’s less about appointments and more about the way I live in general. There is an intensity with which I do things—”a sense of urgency” is something previous managers told me in delight—that comes from the place of feeling like there is not enough time, or if I rush, maybe I’ll get some time “back.” Consequently, because I always feel like there’s never enough time, there never is. Are we all like this?

This spans my day to day life, which, unless it’s a weekend, always looks like a busy bee is buzzing about. My mom used to always tell me that I needed to slow down. My brother once gave me a book called “The Art of Stillness.” My dad told my husband “I know Sarah is very energetic and does things very fast.” Is it just me?

I’m sure it’s not just me, and I hope this piece touches the heart of whoever needs to read it, but certainly people relate to time a bit differently. My husband does not have this sense of urgency and this causes some friction between us and likely, some necessary balance—an act we are still learning to perform together, all the time.

This rush also involves milestones. While years of life coaching taught me to be patient with the process of finding a mate, that you can’t rush love, and that you deserve to enjoy your life while seeking one and most likely in the midst of all these ideas a person will just one day appear—somehow since meeting Carlos, this idea has been harder to apply to the rest of my life.

The idea that anything should adhere to time, in the structured way we see it, is a western construct and mindset. I discovered some mornings ago, when researching something else about my religion, I stumbled on this piece on The Productive Muslim called The Tyranny of the Mechanical Clock.

“Imagine you were born in a village or city in the Islamic world, before European colonization. How would you tell time?

You’d probably tell time by a sundial in the courtyard of a mosque and by the rhythm of the five daily prayers. This wasn’t just true for the Islamic world— across ancient civilizations, from the Babylonians to the Chinese, time was measured through natural cycles and celestial events. 

Time wasn’t ‘precise’ – divided into 24 hours, each hour 60 minutes, and each minute 60 seconds. It was more free-flowing, more natural. Below is a description of how Muslim societies organized their time from a book called ‘Time Sticks: How Islam and Other Cultures Have Measured Time,’ by Dr. Barbara Freyer Stowasser:

If you had to meet someone, you’d coordinate around prayer times (‘I’ll meet you after Dhuhr at such and such place’) or social events (‘I’ll meet you at my brother’s wedding after the walimah’). More importantly, time felt ‘slow’ because there wasn’t a device hurrying you from one thing to the next like a machine.

The transformation to the modern perception of time came gradually. Historical records show that mechanical clocks first appeared in European monasteries in the 13th century, initially (interestingly enough) to regulate prayer times. As historian David Landes notes in his seminal work ‘Revolution in Time,’ these devices slowly transformed from religious tools into commercial and colonial power instruments.”¹

Have you ever noticed how you’re on vacation, time seems to pass slower? That’s because vacation is usually one of the only times in our lives when we don’t have to adhere to a schedule. You may just wake up in this new place and ask yourself what you want to do today—that feeling is liberation. You can meet a father-son pair in a restaurant around breakfast and the next thing you know you’ve moved tables because the sun was hitting too hard—and by then, you’re hungry, so perhaps it’s time for lunch. It doesn’t matter what time it is, because you have no responsibilities, but more importantly, you’re having a nice time! There’s no need to rush off to another activity if your desire is to use your time enjoyably and you already are.

In Muslim countries, it’s still not uncommon to meet in relation to prayer times. When I’m visiting Egypt with my parents, there are still plenty of relatives who say they will swing by “after Maghrib,” the first of the evening prayers. 

In Mazunte, I notice more things are done around the sun. I like to wake up in Mazunte to watch the sunrise, assuming we’re staying in a place where we can easily see it, or if not, I wake up with it and make my way to the beach such that by the time I arrive, it is fully fledged and I can take a dip in the ocean knowing I might be one of the first people to kiss its waters today. 

The rest of the day is fluid, except for the sunset. Fluid doesn’t mean nothing gets done, it just means that it is more flexible since it doesn’t have to meet the arbitrary numbers of the clock. One thing I have noticed about people who live in places by the beach is that the day is very much tied to the sunrise and sunset, and if you don’t watch the sunrise, many people watch the sunset. We used to do this in Alexandria, Egypt, in the summers too. To watch the sunset is to usher the end of the day away and welcome the night, is a delight in places like Egypt where the nighttime is our playground in the summer. But this ritual is also a way to delineate time—a way to delineate time that is way more natural than a clock as the sunrise and sunset shifts with the seasons.

Imagine if we indeed all lived by the sun and our way to tell time—sure, aside from doctor’s appointments and flights—imagine the room that would be left for us to live by our natural order. In the west, it doesn’t matter if it is dark when you go out, if you are supposed to be at work at a certain time, you will be there. If you have a commitment at 5pm and it happens to be in the winter where it may already be dark, tough. You need to be as jovial and energetic as a spring 5pm. If it’s a beautiful day and you’d rather be outdoors at 5pm, you will still need to make your commitment. Clock time dictates all we do. 

And that got me thinking. The natural order of time instead is not just about what the sun is doing when, but also seasonality. It does amaze me how in the west we don’t really expect people’s attitudes and energies to change with seasons—the only reason there is any expectation that people will slow down in December has to do with Christmas, a commercial holiday which also affords many of us some much needed time off, and more time off than is usually found in the entire year.

I’ve always loved summer. Summer has all the promise of a new world and a new life to it, especially when you are younger and not beholden to responsibilities the way adults are. I wrote about summers in Egypt recently, but summer in California was not different in that it seemed to hold a million different possibilities each day, even if at the end all you remember is karaoking with your friends until your head hurts and making mango milkshakes.

Still, just the feeling of being allowed the freedom to feel something is a luxury that many of us can no longer afford to even imagine, especially for those of us who are millennials and were the last allowed to just be young in the summer, instead of being enrolled in a bunch of summer activities as kids now are. When was the last time you felt that level of freedom? Caution: it may be deadly for the way you live your life as you know it (and maybe that is not a bad thing).

On one of my weekly friend calls with Sade recently, she told me how in many cultures, including Ethiopian culture, of which she is from, the new year is actually signified by the coming of spring, and that all this goal setting that comes in winter, a time designed for hibernation, just makes people feel behind. Ding ding ding. Isn’t this exactly how I have been feeling?

Not only is there seasonal time, I realized, but astrology also points to the fact that the planets shift and create different times—times for introspection, times for broken communication, times for some sort of self-improvement. Heck, the phases of the moon affect the movement of the tides. How do we not reflect on this more? How are we living on planet earth and not paying attention to what the moon does while we walk to and from work with our Starbucks lattes and call ourselves “woke” for our Instagram content?

Then there is also research that suggests that for most people except for those that are considered “night owls,” that there is an organic, internal clock—the circadian rhythm—that suggests when are most apt to do certain tasks, among other things. “This built-in schedule shapes your mental acuity, stress levels, and overall health. Daily choices, such as when to eat, can profoundly influence your circadian rhythm. Typically, a person’s circadian rhythm prompts an energy boost in the morning shortly after waking, followed by a post-lunch energy dip in the early afternoon and then another increase in energy during the evening.”²

Modern time, told by a modern clock, is agnostic to how we feel. It’s agnostic to our nature and to the natural world. It’s agnostic, and it is indeed a tyrant.

I’m actually certain that if we were to put down our arms and welcome our natural tendencies of ourselves at humans, there would be no need to calculate time, be it mechanical clock time or moon time or seasonal time. Our bodies would just know what to do, if we just allowed them to listen to themselves.

Often, when I need answers, I turn to my own faith, which makes sense for me as a Muslim. In the Quran, one famous ayah on day and night states that “And He it is Who made the night a covering for you, and the sleep a rest, and He made the day to rise up again.”³

(Sūratul Furqān, No.25, Āyat 47). 

Time is designated into daytime and night, largely so humans can do things in the day and rest at night. That would mean that as seasons change, indeed, we are meant to get more rest in some parts of the year than others. That would also mean that the changes in a woman’s energy and abilities during her cycle are also valid, and probably any other type of cycle of time.

“The system is designed to ease life for the human being and is both a blessing and a sign of the greatness of the Designer,” read another text I found while researching. “Both the night and the day are meant for different purposes and each has a role to play in the success of the human being on earth.

Allah describes the night as a covering, something that hides and protects. It falls over the world like a piece of clothing that keeps away light and energy so that all of creation can relax and recuperate from the toil of the day.

Sleep is a rest for the human being. The word sabat means when things are cut off and is used for stopping work and cutting off activity. That is why the word Sabbath was used to denote the day of Saturday when people would take a holiday from work. During sleep most of the bodily activities stop except necessary activities such as breathing, blood circulation etc. All else takes a break and even the activities that continue become slow and relaxed. The body rejuvenates itself and acquires renewed energy for the next day. Appropriate amount of sleep is necessary for the human being to function well.

The day is for rising up and spreading out. The soul rises into the body again, for sleep is comparative to death. Human beings also rise again and resume their activities…the light that spreads as day begins creates new energy and all of creation, including animals and plants begin working again. Each works on the role it plays in the world.”⁴

There are various verses of the Quran that mention time, though not specifically. Allusions to months and years, age exist—in many places the Day of Judgement is called “The Hour.” The Day of Judgement in Islam is positioned as the Appointment above all appointments, the one no one can miss and no one will forget. It’s positioned as one of the only real things in our lives, this meeting with God.

“Islamic scholars divide time into two, ‘earthly-physical’ and ‘spiritual-metaphysical,’ and they describe current time as ‘psychological time,’ ‘expanding time,’ or ‘existential time.’ According to Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, time is a mysterious coordinate that is in charge of regulating the material world and events. He describes biologic time as activity, growth, development, and speed: ‘However unmoving, constant, and static a clock outwardly appears, it is in a state of continuous movement in essence and inwardly. Likewise the world, which is a huge clock of the Divine Power, rolls or revolves unceasingly in continuous change and upheaval. Its two ‘hands’ of night and day show the passage of its seconds, and its ‘hands’ of years and centuries show the passage of its minutes and hours respectively. Time plunges the world into waves of decay and, leaving the past and future to non-existence, allows existence for the present only.” (Twenty-Fifth Word, p. 455) [3].⁵

Maybe it is because we are able to experience psychological time and not spiritual-metaphysical (I think?), that I have questions. Once, walking in my neighborhood here in Mexico City, an annoying ringing sound appeared from a shop. As I reacted to it and understood it, suddenly, it ended. It remained in my head—my memory of it, I guess. I looked around and noted, yes, the sound no longer exists. Just a few seconds in the past, that’s now where it resides—in the past. Some people say that there is no past and future, but one long continuous moment called the present.

Is the past and future something that only exists in our minds? Another day walking in my neighborhood with my dog, my overthinking mind was looking at the puddles we were about to cross, analyzing the best path forward, when my dog stopped to relieve herself. As I cleaned up after her, it almost took me by surprise that the puddles were still ahead of me—my mind was ahead of my steps and I was almost shocked as I realized I was not there, up ahead, but here, right back here. 

It made me wonder how often my head is really with my body, here in the present, and how much I am missing out on by overthinking. I considered this while I looked at the puddle, and was able to make out the reflection of the palm tree above us in its still water. It was beautiful. I stood there for a moment, admiring it while my head worried about what someone would think if they saw me standing there, and I tried to quiet my mind to really be with the puddle. How much am I missing out on by constantly trying to get ahead of myself? How much am I missing out on by constantly trying to get ahead of time, and still finding I am always behind? 

In this case, what does it even matter what time it is?

For months, Sade knows from our weekly friend calls that I have been trying to find the optimal way—and the optimal time—to live my life. Seasons, sunrises, sunsets, moon phases, different types of calendars—clearly, there are many, many more ways to relate to time than just the mechanical clock that has us buzzing about out kitchens, cars, and workplaces like busy little bees, always late for the things we should be doing. Maybe there is an optimal way and time to live your life, but maybe, it is also just being in the present. I saw a YouTube short recently that stayed with me in my mind that said the reason to stay present is because it is in the present that we are best able to impact our futures. 

“Sometimes I feel like I am living my life backwards, like this is all one big memory,” Carlos, my husband told me a few weeks ago. I think about that sometimes, especially in those mundane moments of my day, walking my dog or washing the dishes, the ones that seem meaningless but in which I am suddenly reminded with the fact that I am here. Is this all one big memory from the afterlife? One of the books I use often, “The Sufi Book of Life,” refers to “the caravan of life” with the people who have died and are gone—the ones we usually think of as behind us—as ahead of us and we are in the back. What if this is true? How would we make sense of ourselves and our lives if we were living one big memory, the back of a caravan of people who are surely our forefathers?

Time is moving. How it truly moves, perhaps is a question best left for God. I love how the Quran refers to a day as a day, but the word for day can also signify an epoch, sort of like how we say in English “during that day and time.” While the Day of Judgement is called The Hour in the Quran, it is said that it will actually be much longer than all of our lifetimes. Perhaps the desire to understand time, what it is, and how it works, is beyond our human capacity. More and more, I find this to be the way I end the discussions that occur in my head about the grand scheme of the world and the Creator who made all these things with so much detail that we are just merely scratching the surface of the surface of the surface of his creation. And still, I like to understand things, so here I am, trying.

Contemplating the simplistic, colonialist, capitalist nature of time through mechanical clocks while I prepared my dog Clara for her walk, I found myself telling her “come here Clara, it’s shoes-y time,” because yes, my dog wears shoes. And this got me thinking—what if we viewed time less as a western construct of what we should be doing when the arms on the clock are doing something specific, and more as the right time for the right thing? More as the time to be present, with the thing at present?

It was not 8:30 am at that moment, it was shoes-y time. As we went on our walk, perhaps it was not so much 8:37 am, it was walk time. And as I came home and started to write and finish this, perhaps it was not a time on the clock so much as it was writing time. Maybe I did not meet my friend Nicole today at 11 am but at Nicole-time, which was the right time to meet my friend, and 10pm isn’t so much 10pm but rather, at a certain time of night when I feel my body is tired, it is wind down time. Clock be damned—perhaps if we were present we would be able to understand the cues from our bodies, or the sun, or seasons, such that we wouldn’t need to over-index on trying to understand what they are telling us.

This is perhaps one long winded way to say maybe the best thing is this: wherever you are, be there. Who cares what time it is? We don’t really know. But you’re here, doing what you’re doing. So, do it well. Do it with love. Do it with presence. Maybe presence and love are the same things.

Maybe it’s not so much that time moves but that things change. It is funny to me how something present right now, say the sound of a power saw from a nearby construction crew, suddenly ends—each moment is simultaneously being created and dying at the same time, and the world exists in an everlasting cycle between death and birth. Each moment is enriched by something, perfect as it is, and suddenly disappears, a continuous momentum static in overall existence. If this is the case, and this includes us, surely there is nothing really one can do to make better use of time or be better at time—but be. To be in the experience of whatever you are doing, fully and wholeheartedly.

1. Abdul-Rahman, T. (2015, June 16). The tyranny of the mechanical clock. Productive Muslim. https://productivemuslim.com/tyranny-of-the-mechanical-clock/
2.  Arootah. (n.d.). How to schedule work around your energy. https://arootah.com/blog/professional-development/how-to-schedule-work-around-your-energy/
3. Academy for Learning Islam. (n.d.). Reflection No. 533 on Q. 25:47 – Purpose of night and day. https://academyofislam.com/reflection-no-533-on-q-2547-purpose-of-night-and-day/
4. Academy for Learning Islam. (n.d.). Reflection No. 533 on Q. 25:47 – Purpose of night and day. https://academyofislam.com/reflection-no-533-on-q-2547-purpose-of-night-and-day/
5. The Fountain. (2013). Time: What does the Qur’an say about it? The Fountain Magazine. https://fountainmagazine.com/all-issues/2013/issue-95-september-october-2013/time-what-does-the-quran-say-about-it