Cuba Time

January 28, 2020

Reading once again about leadership, I’m reminded of many good principles involved in leading people. Setting goals, focusing on one’s strengths, listening to people, having a clear vision...all these and more are components of good leadership. Reviewing this material immediately after returning from nearly two weeks in Cuba however, has enabled me to look at it with a slightly different perspective.

Most of the literature on leadership comes from the world of Western-style business, which emphasizes the drive and determination we’ve come to expect of Wall Street. Focus on the goal and the means of getting there, and eliminating everything that doesn’t contribute to it are almost the Holy Grail of leadership. What I haven’t seen so much is the discipline of reflection and meditation that is a necessary foundation to everything else. As one writer puts it, “It is sad when you climb the ladder of success only to find it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”

Cuba time runs at a different, slower pace. We value efficiency; they value intimacy. One pastor commented to me that we Americans seem to keep people at arm’s length; we don’t like to get close. The economy being controlled by the state, working long hours to get ahead doesn’t work. The national joke seems to be, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” Any time of the day, the streets are crowded with people walking, waiting, bartering, but not working the way we think of it. The work days started no earlier than 9:00 or 9:30 with an hour break for lunch, and ended at 4:00. If there was to be an evening meeting, the morning’s work was usually suspended. Evening meetings began at 8:00 and went till 9:30 or 10:00. If the day is divided into three segments—morning, afternoon, and evening—only two are ever filled in any given day. I had lots of time to reflect, read, and pray in Cuba

Back home, we hit the floor in the morning, and don’t stop till late at night. Long stretches of time dedicated to feeding the soul are harder to come by; I already am feeling the pinch of spiritual starvation beginning to set in. But my Cuba experiences have whetted my appetite for more. I don’t want to simply mark time, check items off my to-do list, and drop wearily into bed at the end of the day. Slowing down is not easy for us Americans, but it is essential. Living in a sound-bite, Twitter world as we do, it is even more important for us to take time to process all the information bombardment we encounter. Failure to do so renders us incapable of discerning the difference between true and false. The world is filled with people who are more than willing to manipulate those who have lost the ability to reflect and think. 

I am thankful for my Cuba experiences. They remind me to slow down, to ponder and pray, that I may discern what is real and what is not, what is true and what is false, what is valuable and what is worthless, what is genuine and what is counterfeit. Slowing down is not easy. It requires us to say no to attractive possibilities, but it yields the reward of enabling us to say yes to the best.