My high school friends and I are still in touch. We still share and discuss social problems. We express our opinions, we criticize, we analyze.
We studied at the same schools. Lived in the same area as youngsters. We exchanged reading materials — articles and books — because we were all into that kind of intellectual thing. And often our conversations would take precedence over our awareness about time. In some ways our talk was like throwing stones out of glass houses.
I still recall the driver of our bus, Mahmoud, who shuttled us to and from college, reminding us regularly to wrap up our conversations because our stop had arrived. I recall the result of our chitchat habit when we were studying in the US. On our way to the airport once, I recall talking to a cab driver about how Arabs are always late.
Later, we were sitting at the airport lounge drinking coffee, and talking, talking and talking. We arrived two hours before our flight, yet we missed our flight. The flight attendant was kind enough to get us on the next flight.
He also said he was surprised we missed the flight considering that we had been sitting nearby for two hours.
“He should talk to Mahmoud,” I said to my friends. We laughed, because we understood exactly why we missed a flight for which we had arrived early. The moral of the story is that we spend so much time talking and analyzing — often about faults we found with a person’s way of thinking or behavior — that we didn’t pay any attention to our own faults, to how all of our talk was affecting our punctuality and self-awareness. Food for thought.
