By Kathleen Frost

It’s 8:59am and I’m standing outside of the salon across the street from the office, ready for the 9:00am leg wax appointment I had scheduled yesterday.

There are no lights on in the store, in fact, the doors are still blocked by the external gate, and there is no one to be seen on the surrounding street.

“Hora Mexicana,” I chuckle to myself.

Hora Mexicana, or the “Mexican Minute,” is the slang used to describe the Mexican understanding of time, that “i’ll be there in five minutes” could really mean half an hour and neither party is offended by the lack of timeliness.

My personal (very Type A) motto is if you’re early, you’re on time and if you’re on time, you’re already late so you can imagine my adjustment period to this flexible way of doing things.

But showing up to my appointment on my time actually didn’t frustrate me at all. It actually gave me time to walk over to a coffee shop and get my morning caffeine fix that I had skipped in order to make the appointment. By the time I showed up twenty minutes later, whoever opened the salon had shown up and the technician was ready to see me.

Everything gets done here, whether it happens exactly when we penciled it into our schedules or even days later, and cultivating the peace of mind it takes to accept that is something Type A people really have to work at (trust me, I would know).

I’d rather be in my position in Mexican culture than a Type B person in the United States. There’s no penalty here for the Type A person when going with the flow, besides internalizing your own stress about this should be more scheduled. But show up to a meeting 30 minutes late in the states? You might as well be labeled a hopeless train wreck who doesn’t have their life together enough to follow a minute-by-minute schedule.

I know that I’ll go back to the states and be happy to be surrounded by more people who like and honor schedules but the opportunity to find another way of operating and find the aspects of that mode that work for me is one I might not have again.

Besides, living too scheduled gets predictable fast and I now know I enjoy being spontaneous more than I ever thought I did before.

There are always new things to learn about or cultivate within yourself and you’ll never know until you try!{:}