Vodou Culture 101: Time
A joke and truism from vodou culture is that a party happens when the spirit wants it to. The listed time might be 2 pm, but the party might start at 4 pm, and it ends when the spirits are done with you all, whether that’s 6 pm or dawn of the next day, after everyone has passed out where they stood and are sleeping on the floor.
Leave your smartphone, watch, or clocks at the door and take the next day off, because you’re going to need a nap.
US majority culture, which values predictability and productivity, finds this deliberately rude. How can you be expected to get everything done, if you have no idea what you’ll be doing and how long it will take? A weekend is barely enough time to do basic chores, let alone a party that has no specific start or ending time, where you are guaranteed nothing. Time is a source of anxiety to US majority culture, seconds metered out before the week’s work—which we are often taught to think of as virtuous, something we have a moral duty to do—starts again.
This sounds crazy to vodou culture.
Vodou views time very differently than the US majority culture, in part because this is not your only life, your only chance to get anything done. You will be back, so whatever you’re working on will happen again, until you master it. You will work on joy as well as responsibility, enjoyment as well as duty. There is no need to worry about time. Time is infinite, from the perspective of humanity, and all things not finished will come around again. You have what might as well be eternity to do whatever it is you’re here to do, and your employment is by far the least important of any of the things you might be working on. Whatever job you have will be lost to you when you move on to the next life, as will the details of any mistakes you might have made in the process.
This does not mean you don’t have to work. It does mean that, when the US majority culture starts talking about a moral duty to be employed, it makes no sense to vodou communities. Employment is something you do to pay bills, not the source of your moral fiber. Making someone else money in the process is not a sign that you’re a good person.
Working yourself to burnout is also not a sign of virtue, it’s a sign of imbalance, a sign that you are not advocating for yourself.
Arguments about virtue and morality coupled to your day job are ultimately a fail in vodou communities. This can make vodou communities seem careless and immoral to the US majority culture, which expects that the controlling style of time management favored by 9-5 jobs is the only virtuous way to look at the night and day cycle.
