Meeting Kairos

Practice

Meeting Kairos | an Emergence Magazine Practice

The Ancient Greeks offered some early language for our experience of time. In their stories, Chronos—old and powerful—oversaw the order and progression of time, and thus the word “chronos” came to represent quantitative time: linear, predictable, and abstracted from the world. Conversely, Kairos, the youthful, wing-footed god of opportunity, expressed the quality of—and possibility within—a given moment. Kairos is timing that the moment itself dictates: an opening in time in the wake of interruption and change. How does our sense of time determine how we participate in the world? How can we learn to balance our reliance on structured time with an openness to the opportunities presented by the unpredictable?

Begin by paying attention to an experience of chronos time. Perhaps you are doing a chore, completing a work project, or eking out a portion of time for leisure. Consider how you organize what you are doing by the time on the clock or an imposed schedule. What is the quality of your attention like? How is the nature of your activity shaped by the time constraints around it? Do you feel tense, supported, rushed? What kinds of activities lend themselves more naturally to chronos timing?

Experiment with stepping out of the frame of chronos and becoming attentive to the spontaneous emergence of kairos time. Choose a simple practice that brings you into contact with the living world, such as hiking, cooking, planting, swimming. Begin when you feel called to, when the moment feels right, and attend to your instincts and the world around you, looking for signals to pause, stop, or continue. If you are interrupted or something surprises you, lean in to any new possibilities that are arising in this moment.

When you feel your activity has run its course, turn to your notebook. What is it like to listen to the moment, to let time unfold of its own accord? Consider timescales beyond yourself. What might our landscapes look like without the imposition of mechanized time? Imagine the movement and interaction of people and creatures — how might the pace of existence shift? How would our relationships and activities change?

Illustrations by Aldo Jarillo

an Emergence Magazine Practice

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