At simultaneous times throughout the city, some very odd things are going on. Some incredibly mundane things are also going on. And all these things going on at the same time get me thinking about time. Time means all kinds of different things to different people. Some people don’t have enough, others have way too much of it on their hands. We live lives that require us to be places at certain times before rushing off to the next thing. We wish we could stop time, or speed it up, depending on the situation. I started to think about this concept of time that we, or maybe just I have.
The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos being the linear, more quantitative measure of time, and kairos, the word for the right or opportune moment. Chronos is a pretty simple thing to deal with when you think about it. There are 24 hours a day, and X amount of things to be done in a day. You either have enough of that time or you don’t, and it fluctuates on a day to day basis. Kairos on the other hand, is something that needs to be recognized as such. It has to be seized when it comes. You have to anticipate it and be able to do the right thing when that moment strikes.
My own perspective of time changes on a daily basis, depending on my moods and whatever else is going on around me. There are days when I don’t trust my own sense of time. I’m there at the agreed upon chronos, but someone really needs to invent a kairos watch for me.