A Kairos moment

It seems that in thinking about how I want to value my time and playing with it, I have stumbled upon a centuries-old vision of it: Kairos.

So much is happening in the world right now. It really does something to me and because of that I feel that I need to share how I am experiencing it. That I need to share what I feel, what I think, what I am facing. But every time I start writing, it seems like the language is working against me. It seems like I can't find the right words, the tone is wrong, like my voice, my way of writing doesn't come out right.

What is going on? Do these feelings not fit my way of writing and am I imperceptibly looking for another way to express myself? Am I focusing too much on the outer world and is that not aligning with my inner world?

Is it part of my search - for my meaning in this world?

Do I perhaps not want to add another voice to all those others who have so much to say and so I decide to remain silent? Is it a fear working against me? The fear, for example, of not being read because my little thoughts don't matter. Because I don't know enough about them or because I don't know if I will be caught if I fly high and perhaps fall deep?

Or at worst, are these silences, these desynchronic moments, a form of procrastination and want to tell me that writing is not the right path for me after all?

Above all, I feel a pressure, a time pressure, to have to write down what I want to say NOW.

“Do not be ready before your time.
There’s no knowing what symmetry
is marshalling itself below this confusion.”

I like to go deep and get lost in a subject. Diving deep into my thoughts and feelings helps me turn away from everything around me, to have my own bubble for a while in which I can let go of all the chaos outside. A bubble in which I can again find a reason why we are the way we are, that things go the way they do.

The past year I felt mostly absent and deep inside myself. Writing did not come, and still does not always come, which makes me wonder when it is time again to surface and show my face, let my voice be heard, have my say.

Do I follow nature's rhythm in this and is spring the right time? Or do I follow my own rhythm in that? Or is there something more magical than that?

“First the long attentiveness of listening
must be paid. Don’t brave your way
out of this husk while it serves
to protect your impressionability.”

For some time now, I've been playing with the idea that things, especially those from your heart, have their own time to surface. The idea that some things have to swim around in a kind of undefined brew, a soup, until they mature. Until they are ready to stand up and show their face. And that requires a kind of timing: a knowing when the soup is ready to be served.

I do recognize this timing thing. I've been doing it all my life: looking for the right moment for a conversation, for expressing my feelings or for ending a relationship. And many times I missed the mark, because when is it finally the best time?

Last week I discovered that at such a moment I am playing with two givens, which the Greeks knew centuries ago and attributed to two gods: Chronos and Kairos.

Chronos is time as we measure it, in years, days and minutes. The linear time in which one event follows another. This is the measurable time we use to make appointments and know when we want to go to bed. But this time is also rigid. We pursue it, we lose it, and it is relentlessly precise. This chronological measurement of time also misses something important: our personal experience of time.

“Let yourself be kept a while longer
in these origins where you are mine alone
and I am only yours.'“

And that is why the Greeks invented Kairos, The Right Moment, the right timing, seizing the best opportunity. Kairos represents our inner experience of time, our moments of daydreaming full of new insights, full of beauty. Kairos is the place where art lives and where you rediscover your authentic self.

Kairos helps us break free from Chronos, from time that keeps repeating in the same pattern forever.

There is even something called a Kairos moment: an inspiration, an epiphany, a change of insight. A Kairos moment can even mean a new beginning. Kairos is also a moment of serendipity: a finding without looking for it. Kairos is the moment when the past, present and future seem to come together.

“Put not your offering into the world too soon.
Let it ripen in the guardianship
of your trepidation.”

And that brings me to the concept of Mystical Time, because during a Kairos moment for a moment you forget the Chronos, the clock. You enter into your own personal experience of time and that can quite give the feeling that you are in a "different time," in another dimension.

A dimension with new possibilities because you have a different experience of space. As if for just a moment you can look around the corner, see the other side of your perception, a glimpse of eternity. In other words, a dimension full of magic. Mystical Time is the moment before Kairos, the moment when you as a human being step back for a moment and leave it to nature, the other time, what emerges from that soup.

“Let this fallow time be stretched
For it is in this unreadiness
that beauty takes its form.”

For me, this Mystical Time is important. It is the time to attune to Kairos, an exercise in intuition, sensing my environment, its parameters and conditions. Being connected to the non-linear flowing waters of time and estimating the past, present and future. It is a place deep inside me, it is my bubble.

It is the undefined brew I am currently swimming in, waiting, feeling, awaiting the right moment to surface again.

“And you will need to remember what grace
was allowed only
by your long staying hidden.”

All quotes are from Toko Pa Turner's poem The Guardianship.

With love,

Daphne