Chasing Time: A Futile Pursuit

Hint: You can’t stop it.

We don’t enter the world with a sense of time, how it passes or what it even means. Babies wake up, get hungry, and want to be fed and changed. Comfort is important.

Young children don’t comprehend the concept of an hour. Ask any parent driving in a car when all you hear is: are we there yet?

Even as a teen, the idea of growing older like your parents seems distant and quite impossible. We defy the passing of time and all the consequences associated with it.

I distinctly remember lying in bed one night trying to figure out the year when I would be as old as my parents. They were nearing the ripe old age of thirty-five about that time, and I had recently finished George Orwell’s 1984, an eternity away from the present.

Guess what! That iconic year came, and I found myself married with three children, ages eleven, nine, and seven. How did that happen?

Time, nature, and my life kept moving through seasons and sunsets.

Until—here I sit pondering a past that is not now and dreaming of a future full of unknowns and uncertainty, which is also not now. Now remains the place of awe, action, hope, and possibility.

In a recent Ask Me Anything episode of The Curiosity Shop, Brené Brown explained why she wears two watches. Interesting. She is not obsessed, and she’s “not keeping double time.” Brown explains:

“I think about my life in both Kronos and Kairos, and so Kronos is clock time, sequential, quantitative, measured.”

She loves the daily data her Apple Watch captures about her life and being able to find her phone. Yes, me too.

“And then this is my grandmother’s Elgin watch from the 50s. And this is Kairos.

This is another word for time. Kronos means clock time. Kairos means deep time, god time.”

Most of us tangle ourselves in Kronos time, the past, future, and the present. We live our lives on a timetable, one quantitative second at a time, waiting for things to get better or fearing the worst.

Kairos, a Greek word, is qualitative and focuses on a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action (Merriam Webster).

As I begin another spin around the sun and add one more year to my Kronos age, I decided to pay closer attention to Kairos, the quality of my days. I want to be wondrously grounded in hope and possibility.

I still adore data, but nothing beats the warmth of a human hand, a hug, and one more glorious sunset. Try a little more Kairos; I’ll meet you under the stars.

Timely thoughts

“If time is my measure, then let me fill it to the brim, pouring out my best, sharing my heart, loving all I can, giving all I have. Let no day be wasted, no chance taken for granted, no moment passed by unseen for the blessing it reveals.”
—Steven Charleston

A timely playlist

Time in a Bottle

Time After Time

100 Years