Cherry tomatoes and the texture of time
The compost-grown cherry tomatoes, sitting in a basket on my windowsill, are ripening: little bubbles of brightness in this deep winter fog. As I type, at 7:30am, there is a wide brushstroke of fuchsia glowing over the highest peak to the east; otherwise my surroundings are soaked in cornflower blue mist.
I’m thinking of time. What time do you have? Are you reading this on your phone on a train, on the commute to work? On the sofa at home, enjoying a cuppa? By time, what I’m really thinking about is the texture of time. Here in countries touched by the combination of the English language and colonial imperialism, time has become a commodity. Here, we often unconsciously keep Chronos time, where the echo of “chronological” will sound familiar.
Introducing Kairos: the right moment
Today, I invite you to sift through the pink-red mist and consider other types of time: in particular, Kairos. For those familiar with ancient Greek, you will know that Kairos time has many meanings, but it is often connected to the idea of opportunity, “the right moment”. I’ve begun to think of Kairos as intuitive time and, in my world, that can mean the intuitive flow of writing poetry, or the intuition around how I care for my child in small, everyday moments. I suspect Kairos may also be apt in certain acts of skill such as archery: the Kairos of the right moment to strike.
Kairos in rhetoric and care
This word is most often discussed in rhetoric, the ancient (and arguably lost) Greek art of debate and intelligent persuasive argument, and it is about what one author calls “the propriety of time” – that is “knowing when to speak, when to be silent, and when to use the specific devices of discourse contained in the science of rhetoric”. This notably echoes the Bible verse: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” And the time in this verse (“a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted …”) reflects this “right timing” of Kairos, also linked to the wheel of the seasons.
When it comes to thinking of intuition around my child, this brings me to care, and I believe any kind of care work, if done well, moves differently. Indeed, some scholars consider midwifery to be “Kairos care in a Chronos world” and if we think of the tensions that arise in any kind of care environment which also attempts to fit into the chronological demands of mainstream culture, we can see that the two worlds don’t align.
Resisting Chronos through intuition
Notice when you choose to operate from that intuitive, felt sense of Kairos time, creating a magical spell of quiet subversion against the relentless and often overwhelming chronology of Chronos. For example, I’m surrounded by people who follow the moon, our oldest “clock” and those who especially note the summer and winter solstice, after the movement of light in the sky. (Also why “daylight savings” is an outrage.)
There is plenty of talk in the “mainstream” about billionaires trying to live forever, about pervasive anti-ageing propaganda; there are debates about fighting the march of time (Chronos) and trying to look, act or physiologically “be” young with hormonal treatments. However, taking a longer view, I wonder if culture itself has been gripped by Chronos, being marched to the edge of the cliff of time. A society of unwise, un-eldered youngsters are much more vulnerable to believing that time is a line rather than a spiral: to fear and submit to a thief of time. Those aligned with Kairos, with intuitive time, with the sort of time required for caring and nurturing; those helping others into life (midwifery) or death (palliative) care, or indeed aligned with seasonal gardening (Earth) care, will not be chivvied along in this unthinking way.
Beyond Western concepts of time
Where do you move in Kairos time? Where does your intuition bloom? Where do you obey or resist Chronos? These are all nonetheless concepts from “the west” so I end with another concept of time, described by Tyson Yunkaporta, Indigenous author and thinker from the Apalech Clan in Far North Queensland: “We don’t have a word for non-linear in our languages because nobody would consider travelling, thinking or talking in a straight line in the first place. The winding path is just how a path is, and therefore it needs no name. One man tried going in a straight line many thousands of years ago and was called wamba (crazy) and punished by being thrown up into the sky.”
