We measure our lives in trips around the sun; time on task, years at work, decades of raising a family, weeks on vacation. The clock and the calendar remind us of the passage of time.
Tick, tick, tick. Our lives progress and, at some point, we look back, in amazement at the sheer volume of accumulated seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades that have blown past.
The Greeks categorized this passage of time using the word Chronos. In our lives, it is the quantitative measurement from birth to now. But, as the Greeks knew, the term does not cover the full extent of how to think about time.
While Chronos is quantitative, the qualitative aspect of time is called Kairos. Kairos signifies a period or season, a moment of indeterminate time in which an event of significance occurs. It is
also referred to by many philosophers and mystics as “deep time”.
You know, those moments of deeply intense emotional states.
(Think the birth of your children, music that moves you to ecstasy, art that promotes a profound emotional reaction or anything that promotes the feeling, “It doesn’t get any better than this moment.”)
The mere passing of time, while a marker of being physically present on the planet, is completely mundane next to the ideas promoted by the meaning of Kairos.
It’s one thing to celebrate the additional candles on the cake. That’s not a bad thing (after all, not everyone reaches milestones of living into their 70’s, 80’s, 90’s or beyond). But to hold onto the intense experiences signified by Kairos is a whole other ball game.
As we age, our chronological age matters way less than the moments that touch our very core. Those that shift our soul, melt our hearts and bring us a new way of looking at our existence on the planet. Fix your gaze on those events in your past—and look forward to each opportunity to promote the experiences described in the ideas of Kairos.
We are born, we spend time here and we die. It’s up to you to fill the time with meaning.
