“It’s a Paradise!”

There are many differences between countries and societies because people are different, climate is different, history is different and so on and forth. When you go to a foreign country, you would enjoy differences or be surprised by differences or struggle with differences. I would say that differences are the colors of world; imagine that all society is the same, all people are the same, and the whole world is the same, what color do you see? Well, I don’t say that “monotone” is bad; I like peculiar world in black & white films; I prefer simple combination of colors to showy one of colors. However what are the colors for heaven in your image? Isn’t it colorful? Can you imagine a heaven in black and white? I think differences paint our world and make the world interesting indeed. And also you can say that difference is selection and possibility. Do you want to live in the world without selection of life or possibility for future like slaves? And it does affect human brain in terms of evolution.

However when you are thrown in the midst of different culture for the first time, you would get stunned, puzzled, and confused and some might unconsciously reject or disgust differences of other people. Because we live in our own common sense, norms, or obsession of our own society, so it is very natural that your unconsciousness refuses differences in other culture. Yet you remember, difference is the color of life. It’s better for us to accept the difference and enjoy colors of life. When I was in France, I was really surprised that people work as less as possible and really enjoy their “vacances – vacation”. Vacation for Japanese means “time of rest” while it means time of vacances for French; Japanese live for work whereas French people work for life. There’re differences indeed.

 I always say to my colleague: “Ghana!! It’s a paradise!” We, Japanese, are obsessed by time in our society and sometimes time is more important than life in Japan; if you are not punctual, people see you as lazy. Time is the king of our society. And once you promise, you must keep promise whatever reasons are, otherwise you lose your friends. On the other hand, in Ghana (at leas at my school), time doesn’t exist in our sense, in other words Ghanaians have different sense of time from ours. People have a watch and school has timetable for classes, but nothing happens on time at all. Teachers don’t come to school in time; they don’t start and finish class on time; they have work hour but they go home before the time, and when rain falls they don’t come to school. And promises would be always forgotten in Ghana with the magic words “Oh, I forgot it!” If you excuse yourself like that, people would forgive you in this society. To my eyes, they are pretty lazy but they are normal in this society because everything goes in this manner. It’s a matter of value. They have the different value of time. Although I am used to it little by little, I don’t feel very comfortable with it because I’m obsessed by time. Imagine that you’re in a heaven where time doesn’t exist. Time is one of colors of life while no time is also a different color of life. Which heaven do you prefer to live in?  

By the way what is a “paradise”? According to the “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” on my desk, the first definition reads: “A perfect place where people are said to go when they die”. In my understanding paradise and heaven seem the same place. But what does it mean by “perfect”? A perfect place for you and a perfect place for me would be different because we have different cultural backgrounds, namely different values. So is there a paradise for all people? Does a perfect place for all people exist? Maybe, “when we die”, means we can’t enjoy the perfect paradise while we're alive. I’ll enjoy the worldly paradise in Ghana for a while, being lazy without sense of time.