We in the West have brought punctuality to perfection and developed business into a religion. We customarily--and from our standpoint rightly--despise the East for its light-hearted attitude towards these matters. We arrive at our business engagements with clocklike precision and involuntarily carry the same spirit into our social appointments, too. We work hard and well, and to relax when the mood prompts us is to yield to one of the seven deadly sins. Perhaps the only shining exceptions are to be found in bohemians and those in artistic circles, whose attitude was aptly and humourously put by Oscar Wilde into the mouth of one of his characters: "He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time." During my wanderings in the East I have not failed to note the difference of outlook, the easy-going attitude toward work and time, and though this at first excited my irritation, it now receives, within due limits, my approbation. For I, too, have felt the pleasure of taking life easily, the delight of ceasing to be pursued by old Kronos, the comfort of no longer reacting to clockwork and mechanical discipline. In Egypt I found this spirit at its apogee, and now it suits me well. Yet I hope I shall never succumb as far as that rotund Hindu Indian moneylender of Lahore, who boasted to me that when he had an appointment for ten o'clock in the morning he invariably turned up at two in the afternoon. I looked at him, shocked, and then reproached him for such inconsiderate conduct. "Oh, don't worry," he replied, "for even if I did turn up at ten my client would invariably turn up at two!" However, I mastered one lesson through my sojourn under the pleasant Egyptian sky, a lesson which has been well put by Rabelais, who said that the hours were made for man, and not man for the hours. It is not that I want to enter into a defense of unpunctuality--far from it--but that I want to enter into a defense of that inner personal freedom which can live in the Eternal Now, which can carry on its work and duties without being enslaved by them.
-- Notebooks Category 15: The Orient > Chapter 6 : Islamic Cultures, Egypt > # 42
