Remembering To Give Time To Time

In Spain there’s a saying “hay que dar tiempo al tiempo,” roughly translated as you should give time to time. I remember the first time heard it was in 1989 I’d just gotten my Master’s from Boston University and had moved to Madrid. I was spending my first month hosted by the family of friend and looking back I see I had made a bold and wild decision to move to a country I had never been to before and make my life there. I had beginners level Spanish and about three friends in Madrid. I had no other work contacts or leads, just a few letters of recommendation from old employers my CV.

There I was, excited, focused and not a little frustrated that a few months into this adventure, things were going slower than I had hoped. I wasn’t speaking Spanish as fluently as I thought I would, I was pounding the pavement — literally — to find organizations that would be interested in hiring an American communication specialist, but wasn’t finding many leads. I was frustrated, things had to go faster and I didn’t know how to make that happen. That’s when my friend Pablo chose to share this piece of Spanish wisdom wrapped up in this simple saying. “Hay Doris, tienes que dar tiempo al tiempo,” reminding me that that things happen in their own time and I could not control that. At the time, I was really annoyed at him. I couldn’t see why he thought he should give me this quaint piece of folk wisdom at…