How I, a Filipino-American, struggle with a sense of time
I never realize how much being Filipino-American actually impacts my life until I really take a step back and analyze my life. A little weird phrase, I admit, but I have had so many opportunities to self-reflect the past couple months that it just felt right. All of my child studies major courses require some sort of self-reflection, but that’s not even where I had this realization. I mean, I’ve had so many realizations from my child studies courses, but one in particular occurred in a different course: Time and Communication. This course actually forced me to think about how time impacts communication, which is part of a larger conversation, but I never realized how much culture impacts time. That is one aspect of culture that I never even thought of or considered. I talk more specifically about time and culture here- very insightful btw.
My views on time, from a Filipino-American, is probably far different than someone who only identifies as American. I’ve always used and heard the term “Filipino time”, but I just never really thought about it because it’s just something that has been embedded into my life. I mean, I often find myself saying, “ugh, I’m running so late, I’m so Filipino”, but I never really made that connection between time and culture. Filipinos are deemed to always be running late and it’s mostly because we don’t really constrain ourselves to the clock.
As a Filipino-American, I know that I am capable of being both punctual and late because I know both American and Filipino time. It all just depends on context. For me, I try really really hard to be on time when it’s school and work, probably because school and work run on white people time, so I don’t want to seem irresponsible. But when it’s other things, I struggle a bit. I don’t know why, but whenever I am going to be with other Filipinos-Americans, I’m just naturally late. When I’m with other Filipino-Americans, I know what I’m getting myself into; it’s a bit easier to be running late, they understand, and I just like to take my time.
After talking to several friends about Filipino time, it was apparent that Filipino time is strongly linked to Filipino parties. Filipinos love to party. Filipino parties are always such a fun time; we eat, drink, sing karaoke, dance, and just enjoy each others’ company. Sometimes, we even play games. We just love to have a good time and we value our family a lot. There is an endless amount of food and time just flies, but you don’t want it to stop. It’s always just so fun to be around family, which makes our goodbyes so elongated. It’s actually a little wild when I think about it because when we have these parties, we really have these parties; they never last for just two or three hours. They always turn into long scale events. For instance, if I’m going to a family party, I subconsciously just block out that whole day for that one event because it’s not just one event; it can literally last for hours. If the party starts around lunch time, it doesn’t usually end until about 10PM, at least; but if it starts at around dinner time, it usually doesn’t end until at least midnight. These are just unwritten cultural rules about the time constraint of these events. I honestly cannot remember a time where I went to a party with a literal time constraint, like are those real?
Filipinos, well at least my family, spend a tremendous amount of time together, it actually surprises me. It’s because of how close we are and how much has been built into these relationships. I mean, we’ve all literally known each other our entire lives, and we all actually know each other fairly well. We build these strong bonds and that time is so precious. In this way, family time is the bridge between Filipino time and culture. Family time is the most precious and most valued thing in Filipino-American culture, besides the food, but the food is what helps bring us together. There is no time when you’re with family.
mahals,
kaels
too bad ain’t me<3
(mahals: our abbreviation for “mahal kita” translating to “i love you” in Tagalog)
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