Reflections

October 2024

3. On time

Every kairos is a chronos, but not every chronos is a kairos (Hippocrates)

There is chronos, which we can measure. We have clocks and calendars for that and can passively observe our lives ticking by. All too quickly. But then there is kairos. A different concept of time altogether: a time which finds us. And one which we must actively inhabit.

Kairos was, in the Ancient world, the opportune moment or season. It has its roots in archery, where it signified the exact moment to let the arrow fly in order to penetrate its target. Or, in weaving, the optimum moment to push the shuttle through the threads on a loom.  And this seems quite alien to modern life, if we think about it on those archaic terms. We are back in a mythical Homeric past; Odysseus with his bow and Penelope at her loom. What on earth has that to do with us? But a moment’s reflection will call to mind times when we have failed to grasp the kairos moment and seen it pass us by. The moment when we should have spoken; when to have spoken was necessary, but we did not. And, happily, there will have been times when the kairos moment was seized and we entered that narrow opening which, in some strange way, we knew was already there for us.

Unsurprisingly, many religions have their kairos moments, where the concept of kairos denotes the right season, the appropriate time.  ‘There is a season; turn, turn, turn’ as folk singer Pete Seeger and, later, The Byrds, paraphrased Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. It’s a beautiful passage of Old Testament poetry which is still used today in funeral services. And kairos is also used throughout the New Testament. The Sanskrit word for kairos is ‘ritu’ – the  ‘right’ time; still used in Hinduism to refer to the correct moment for various ceremonies and rituals.

 Japan has its cultural concept of ichi-go ich-e: ‘one time, one meeting’, Often associated with Japanese tea ceremonies, it is a reminder to treasure the unrepeatable nature of a moment. For each meeting we have is unique and irreplaceable: a once-in-a-lifetime experience which must be cherished as it will never come again. The same people may be there on the next occasion; the same actions may be repeated. But it will still be different.

Kairos functions as a rhetorical device in literature, where it is used to consider the timeliness of an argument or message. But what does it have to do with poetry? I believe a poem can attempt something quite paradoxical: to distill, in word, image or metaphor, that startling moment when everything changes. Poetry can be a way of illuminating and transmitting this shift: the creative spark will suddenly set the page on fire and, for that brief moment, nothing will be the same again. It is a paradox because these transient kairos moments cannot truly be measured or recorded. Some must just be apprehended; caught on the wing. And neither can they be stored up, but must be released to soar again. Maybe, as in the words of William Blake, the kairos moment is all about ‘kissing the joy as it flies.’