The Wisdom of Liming

On the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, there’s a skill which is widely revered, which has been granted a word of its own, and which the rest of the world is still waiting to properly understand or honour: liming.

To lime (the concept comes as a verb or a noun) means to pause one’s regular activities, often for several hours, typically in the evening, in order to gather with people, usually near strangers, probably outside – in order to talk, listen and (at points) silently contemplate the surrounding natural or human scene. It might sound obvious described in this way, but done properly, with intelligence and intent, liming is in fact a rare art. To know how to lime isn’t just one more low-key leisure activity, it’s evidence that one has understood some extremely significant things about oneself and one’s place in society and the cosmos.

We can take away six lessons from the Antillean practice of liming.

1. Companionship as Therapy

We know it in theory: other people are good for us. And yet we seem to have mostly determinedly built a world that atomises us, where it is close to impossible to talk to strangers, where the protocols in public spaces militate against any kind of spontaneous interaction, where we are brought together only to shop or make money and must otherwise hide in narrow hutches that have to be paid for through a lifetime of striving.

As a result, we overinvest in Romantic love, placing unfair demands on one person rather than leaning more realistically on the support of a multitude. We ruminate on problems that become ever larger the more we keep them enclosed in our airless minds. We imagine what ‘other people’ might think without ever testing our premises. And we become obsessed with individual achievement as the only apparent route to being witnessed and treated with warmth.

A liming culture lifts a host of these burdens from us. Without needing elaborate introductions, without prior notice, we are allowed into a group, in a cafe, on a street corner or in the park. To start a conversation isn’t a risky intrusion on standard etiquette. It’s the done thing; it’s what’s expected.

Surrounded by new faces, it suddenly no longer matters quite what we imagined alone in our room only minutes before. Perhaps the problems can be overcome. Maybe we’ve been getting a lot of things wrong. We may have lost perspective. Not knowing what others were thinking, we may have filled in the blanks in unfortunate ways. Even when our companions are not discussing our worries exactly, in the course of airing their particular concerns, they relativise our own. We can derive a sense that we’re all beautifully flawed creatures muddling along, doing our best, looking up at the stars and routinely falling into ditches. We’re not uniquely cursed. We’re loveable fools – as attested by the bursts of laughter that greet many of the anecdotes told by limers across Bridgetown and Port of Spain.

2. It’s Not About Romance

We typically cling to the notion that being part of a couple is the only way to be known, to be seen and to be treated with kindness. Liming culture upsets these daunting assumptions. It understands that Romantic relationships are tricky, that we’re all difficult from close up and that the worst sides of us tend to come out where we have our highest expectations.

When with a group of fellow limers, we are kind enough not to want too much, these people don’t have to grasp every aspect of our soul, it won’t be a tragedy if they don’t understand all the details of our day or agree with us on every point.  

We’re not trying to make a life together and, with more circumscribed aims, we come closer to understanding what love can be in its higher, less egoistic, more compassionate and accepting dimensions.

3. Presence is More Important Than Content

These are not the conversations of Socrates. The value of liming isn’t premised on the discovery of any specific set of truths.

Liming discussions drift here and there with seeming randomness; that is their point and their focus. 

We aren’t going anywhere fast, but something important is happening nevertheless. We’re being allowed into others’ streams of consciousness. We’re finding out the true contents of others’ minds, in their variety and oddity. We’re daring to share with one another what it’s like to be human.

4. Silence is Fine

No one will mind if we sit out a topic for a while or if the whole group falls quiet. As is implicitly understood: we can only get into a position to disclose the really important things when we overcome our fear of silence.

5. There Are Alternatives to The Status Race

We too often assume that what we are fundamentally after are status and money (and fight accordingly), but the insight of liming is that it may be sweetness and companionship that we truly seek.

Among other limers, it no longer really matters who might be CEO and who a street vendor. What counts is our openness of spirit, our degree of candour and our readiness to see the absurdity of things.

It isn’t that we won’t – as limers – in any way strive to get promoted. It’s just that, already on a modest salary, we’ll be the recipients of the kind of emotional reassurance and fellowship that  might otherwise power a hunger for a fortune.

6. Busy-ness and Laziness Are Closer Than We Think

It looks as if we might just be being lazy. But the limer has a different take on the notion of effort. From the liming perspective, there’s a distinct laziness in being always so ‘busy’ that one forgets one’s dependence on others. There’s laziness in sternly insisting that one’s individual efforts should count for so much and in basing one’s esteem on narrow professional pride. There’s laziness in not registering someone’s new haircut or the stars or the fresh coat of paint on Mrs X’s house. There’s laziness in neglecting the details of life which, if a novelist put them in a book, one would remember to praise and love.

The concept of liming gives us the courage to take seriously what we may have wanted all along but been too hesitant or confused to formulate and ask for. We should consider ourselves extremely fortunate to learn the art of liming – and to have a chance to fall in with a group of fellow limers before too long.