Slow Down and Smell the Mate

Before anything else: the last word in the headline has nothing to do with one's spouse; it is pronounced "mah-tey" and refers both to the gourd beverage container pictured on the right, as well as to the herbal preparation within, the Southern Cone substitute for coffee and tea.

The mate ritual is akin to the coffee break or tea time: a pause in the daily labor, a slowing down of the pace and "living life in full measure," as the conductor cited in the "Willoughby" post below might have put it. A time for socializing, symbolized by the passing of the mate, all present sipping from the single "straw" (the "bombilla) as a sign of solidarity if not of the hygiene practices of the northern hemisphere.

The pace here in the Southern Cone is practically funereal compared with the frenetic scramble of the English-speaking lands. There are times when one accustomed to a quick-march grows frustrated with what seems to be foot-dragging, dawdling, time-wasting... But one learns that frustration will do one no good, because nothing will change, save that perhaps the frustrated northerner will develop an ulcer and not be able to digest the herbal infusion being shared by those seated in the shade of, say, a carob tree. Better to take life as it comes, one concludes.

I will not get done today all that I wish, but neither will I lose sleep over this fact; I have learned something from the simple folks who inhabit this district, rural folk with rarely more than a middle school education, who rarely leave the valley, who aspire to very little beyond basic needs. Could I live just as they do? Not by choice, no, but were the world, the flesh and the devil force me to slow down owing to a collapse of the fast-paced society that exists outside the valley, well, I suspect I would and be none the worse for it.

Can you say the same?