It always takes longer

One thing we learned early on in our life in India is that things almost always take longer than we are told they will. This is true across a broad range of things, some simple like getting a ticket for a train, or running to the store, etc. It is also true for larger things like registering a new car, building a new building, etc. While this simple fact of life here may not seem like a big deal, it can at times be terribly annoying, especially when you forget it or are not ready for it to rear its ugly head.

As I ponder this issue of the timing of things, it raises any number of questions. Perhaps my sample questions will reveal more of my own line of thinking as I write here. This just may be therapeutic. Let’s see.

Line of Questioning #1 – Is the fact that things take longer than estimated a result of poor planning or foresight? Can people simply just not actually calculate or estimate with any reasonable accuracy how long something will take? Do they not learn from the past and therefore adjust future estimations based on that? Poor record keeping or a very short-term memory would play into this.

Line of Questioning #2 – Is this process the result of a different set of values at play, i.e. they know it will take longer, but in an effort to be ‘nice’ of ‘helpful’ or not to tick you off, they say it will take less time? ‘Truth’ (i.e. an accurate and realistic estimate of time) is outweighed by the desire for friendship or helpfulness. Another possibility along this line is that they simply don’t have a clue, but that is not a ‘helpful’ answer, so they give some random guess at a timeline in an effort to be helpful.

Line of Questioning #3 – Are people here just so unbelievably optimistic that they simply can not imagine one (or more) or any number of possible situations delaying the desired outcome? If you can’t or are not willing to see possible obstacles, you won’t be able to account for them in your estimate.

Line of Questioning #4 – Are things here just so totally random that there is no real way to accurately estimate how long something will take? If the process changes every single time you do something, that would make it hard to estimate accurately. But that would beg the question as to why the process changes each time? And if it does change every time, how does anything at all get done here with any regularity?

While I can admittedly see each one of these played out as very real possibilities in situations I have been in even in the last 6 months, I am hesitant to say one is more common or more at fault than another.

Of course there are some who don’t seem to have much trouble with this issue. But that then begs a whole new line of questions (at least in my own mind) as to whether I get special treatment in the ‘things always take longer’ dept in an effort to teach me something. Is God is trying to help me learn something (patience being near the top of that list)? Am I giving off some kind of vibe that induces people to try to irritate me in this way (being too demanding, pushy, or arrogant would do it here)? Is the color of my skin getting me treated this way? Or maybe everyone has to deal with this, but some deal with it better than I do.

Hmmmm, so that was only slightly therapeutic, and leaves me with many more things to examine about myself, my role in all of this, and my expectations and responses to the situations thrown at me.