"Best Of" #3 - On Time

A meditation on the nature of time. Originally written in December of 2006


“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
-- Douglas Adams

I have learned by hard experience over the course of approximately the past six months or so that there are two sorts of time. The first sort of time is that sort governed by clock and calendar. It is factory time, school-bell time, hurry-up-or-you'll-be-late time. It is measurable, quantifiable, easily rationed out in carefully controlled drips and drabs to this person or that activity. The Greeks had a name for this sort of time, they called it kronos. It is an orderly thing, it moves in straight, predictable lines. Most often it is the only sort of time we recognize in our world of rush hour traffic and speed-dating.

Man was not meant to live by kronos alone and the Greeks knew this. They recognized the existence of another sort of time which they called kairos, time measured not in hours or weeks but in moments and cycles. It is the sort of time that one experiences when the clock seems to stop, when you are so fully immersed in what you are experiencing that all else becomes utterly irrelevant. It does not matter whether the experience is joyful or terrifying, it is on such moments that our lives are built. But we need more than that. We need kairos daily.

Some people claim that the nature of modern life is such that there is little room for kairos. I would disagree. The opportunity is hiding around every corner, the challenge is to see it. Even in a world ruled by time clocks and datebooks we still have a choice.

So reclaim your kairos. Read a book. Smell a rose. Hug someone. Watch the sun set or rise. Feel the wildness in the night wind. Be aware of something other than your watch.