A Bias of How to Use Time "Correctly"

The concept of time in the Maltese summer can take some getting used to. The cloudless brightness can start as early as 5am, and darkness does not revisit until 9pm. During the day, the sun can be blazingly hot, making any outdoor activity that does not involve jumping into the cold water of the nearest pool or the sea too physically demanding. The result is towns that were empty during the day coming alive with people after 7pm, with the crowds not departing well after midnight, as the loud music and artificial lighting keep the folks jiving. 

This entirely different span of leisure time is fitting for Malta's status as one of Europe's most popular holiday islands, even for residents like me. On a recent weekend excursion, with an overnight stay at a beachfront hotel, to the less visited southern coast, I saw even how a small town can shift its entire life-and-work schedule hours later in the day. Despite the town being less heaving with the international tourist traffic that inundated the infrastructure elsewhere, it somehow still manages to adhere to the Maltese "summer time" as well as any holiday resort.

On one hand, it is not a surprise that it does. The town, Burzebugga, is known for a long stretch of white sandy beach fronted by crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean. Despite a view of the industrial to-and-fro in the container terminal right in front of it, Pretty Bay still manage to stand up to its name. During the hot hours of the day, plenty of locals and Maltese residents alternate between jumping into the cold waters and drying themselves under parasols. The few eateries under the shade do a roaring trade serving up tropical cocktails during happy hours.

On the other hand, it is surprising to see the town being so leisurely. With only two major hotels by the waterfront, the tourist industry here suffer from limited capacity to attract merrymakers. The average townie sure likes lounging around the beach just as much as any tourist from abroad, but they do not have the luxury of time. The international traveler can lie around knowing that they will just dine in the restaurant and sleep at the hotel when the sun goes down. But the locals have groceries to buy, errands to run, and a regular life to live on a regular weekend. They cannot afford to live on summer time.

So as I stare at the heaving eateries past 11pm and the deserted streets the day after, I cannot help but wonder how the locals manage to do all that they need to do without feeling sleep-deprived or at least a little bit guilty that they are not maximizing every hour of the day. If they are sleeping, drinking, and laying around the beach on a Saturday, and then work their regular jobs on weekdays, then when do they exactly find their other purposes in life: self-improvement courses, looking for new jobs, side gigs, and even reading up on current events?

But just as I had that train of thought, I caught my own bias. All of those "side efforts" are ultimately for the goal of greater earnings to purchase a better life, finding fulfillment because the current way of life is not fulfilling, and, to put simply, equipping oneself for reach the pastures on the other side that seem to be greener. In my rush to question how some people are not engaging in this process, I have inadvertently assumed that the desire is universal and commonplace, shared across locales, cultures, and social stratification. But is it really?

Taking a second look at the late-night ocean-dippers dotting Pretty Bay, I am quickly convinced otherwise. Many of these people, ranging from children to retirees, do not have the same outlook in life, and they are not at all ashamed of that difference. Living in this little slice of paradise in the Mediterranean, they see the habit that they developed, chilling until 7pm and partying it up in the hours after, as exactly the ideal situation that they want to expend their summer. For them, there may not be any greener pastures than the Maltese definition of leisure hours.

Call it unambitious if you want. But in our attempts to define what is "normal" in how people should live their lives, we are ultimately playing into a self-fulfilling prophesy that we need to find and adhere to an ideal that is normal. Anyone that do not adhere to our own predefined normal, just as the summer hours of Malta, get lumped into the "weird" category that we seek to not only distance from but also actively ostracize and correct through peer pressure. If the result of ambition is having to exert that mental pressure on oneself, perhaps ambition is not worthy it.