Of pumpkins and coaches
It’s fitting to begin our foray into Time in the realm of “once upon a time”, since nothing could better prepare us for the imaginative ideas to be found in later writings on the subject, than the ability to suspend disbelief.
T
here are many versions of the story of Cinderella, and they all offer their symbolic meanings. But with the exception of that by the Brothers Grimm (characteristically the grimmest of all), the part played by time is an enduring and central theme. Cinderella was used to living life under the thumb of time. And the evening of the king’s ball was to prove no different. But distracted by the attentions of the young prince she forgets her midnight deadline, and … we know the rest. All appearances – gown, glass slippers and handsome coach – lost. The claims of true love notwithstanding, that should have been the end of it. For distraction is the enemy of memory and the ally of time – and time, as Cinderella found, is no ally.
The impossible speed of the present makes mockery of our perception of sway. And while we might carefully plan the future, the closer it gets the more headstrong it becomes.
Time is at best an unforgiving friend. While we perceive a sense of order in the movement of our lives, a seemingly managed transition of present to past and future to present, it’s an illusion. Far from being orderly, time’s movement is chaotic. The impossible speed of the present makes mockery of our perception of sway. And while we might carefully plan the future, the closer it gets the more headstrong it becomes. Even as we are looking to experience it as present, it’s escaping from our grasp into past. So our lives are lived in a rear view mirror, gazing back at what’s happened, while those events retreat into memory or oblivion.
This is time as we know it. The ancient Greeks called it chronos, after the father of the pantheon of Greek gods who, out of fear they might usurp him, devoured his children. This is truly time the merciless – despotic and inexorable. But there is another notion of time, a more benevolent and enriching one. For the Greeks saw time as having two distinct faces – in effect much like Janus the Roman god of gates and doors. While one looked in the direction of what was receding, the other looked forward to what promised to be. This hopeful side was kairos.
Unfortunately (for those wanting to better understand the concept of kairos) the
idea of promise is not the only interpretation, nor was it the
earliest use of the term. Homer employed
it in The Iliad (probably its first reference) as timeliness, and
also as a specific kind of vulnerability in battle (the inopportune opportunity
of one’s enemy). Since then, many ideas have been forced, or forced themselves, to fit within the elusive
boundaries of this concept. The
Pythagoreans (understandably enough for mathematicians) saw it as proportion in
all things, the essential balance between the opposites that comprise the
universe – and as such, the foundation of all virtue. Aristotle enshrined its significance in his Rhetoric,
and expanded the sense of proportion to that of equity. To Plato it embodied propriety, and in this
forged a link between ethics and aesthetics, rightness and beauty.
And we must stop there. The most cursory review of kairos reveals an industry of interested academics engaged in plumbing its depths of meaning. Our interest relates to time only, and we’ll waste a lot of that unless we limit the terms of reference accordingly.
So let’s commence our search for understanding with the rhetorician Eric Charles White’s distinction between the “right moment” and the “opportune”. An archer chooses an opportune moment and must judge the accuracy and power required to release the arrow. But the weaver must act at the right moment in drawing the yarn through a gap that is offered only momentarily. The first is skilful, functional – an act in pursuit of a narrow immediate goal. The other is both methodical and artistic, an aesthetic intention, an essential part of a far-reaching and longer range objective that combines a collection of such actions into a richer mosaic.
It is this distinction between the ‘now’ and the ‘what lies ahead’ that offers the greatest insight into how we might apply the concept of kairos in our own lives.
It is this distinction between the ‘now’ and the ‘what lies ahead’ that offers the greatest insight into how we might apply the concept of kairos in our own lives. The theologian and Harvard philosopher Paul Tillich expressed the futility of placing demands on the now when he wrote “there are things in which the right time, the kairos, has not yet come” and “not everything is possible at every time, not everything is true at every time, nor is everything demanded at every moment.”
In a lyrical description (of what is an inherently poetic notion) Sam Keen, in his Hymns to an Unknown God, offers this meaning – “Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change his direction in life at just the right moment.” Keen, divinity scholar and philosopher, draws out the transcendental essence of kairos (“the realm of the spirit”) that led to its early appropriation by the Christian church as a symbol of transformation, under the influence of divine intervention (“My appointed time draws near” – Matthew 26:18). But more importantly for us, kairos in Keen’s words can also be seen in a strictly metaphysical sense, without reference to religion.
The church’s requisition of the term remained true to the mystical character of kairos, but not alas other usurpers. In an apparent need to idealize the present (confident that it exists) many modern proponents have exploited and trivialized the concept, reducing kairos to the simple notion of ‘good timing’. Thus we find references to knowing your ‘kairotic clock’, motivational exhortations to ‘seize the moment’, and the use of the term in time management seminars almost as a cliche. If this is all we are to make of it, then (to appropriate T S Eliot) we miss both the experience and the meaning.
Kairos was conceived by the Greeks within metaphysics and there it should remain. It needs no Isaac Newton in its corner, proclaiming its physical place in the structure of the universe. Nor is there a need to debate its existence (an argument that dogs its cousin chronos). This is part of its strength, and potential relevance in our lives. Drawing from the wisdom of the ancients in dealing with the predations of time necessitates embracing the metaphysical, because conceived of in physical terms time seems unstoppable. And if you’re not convinced of the remorselessness of chronos then observe the hourglass – the cruellest and most apposite image. There you will see the future and the present, indistinguishable now, slipping together into the void of the past, smothered and buried under the weight of other once hopeful presents and futures.
Is our perception of time part of our problem with time? We see ourselves in thrall to a self-created vision of the future...
Is our perception of time part of our problem with time? We see ourselves in thrall to a self-created vision of the future, yet the events we single out for eager anticipation are a mere fraction of the life we will actually live until they arrive. And even then, as they are experienced so will be their loss. How do we respond to such a ruthless prospect other than by changing our idea of the ‘now’, to create a more meaningful and lasting sense of it? Make if you like our own version of what William James (father of Psychology) called the specious present – “the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible.” To do this we must broaden the expectation of what is to be enjoyed. Not merely live the moment, but expand our sense of it. Bring into the experience, and take pleasure in aspects of what led to it, however separate these may be. (Enjoyment signposts somewhat akin to what behaviorists once called ‘fractional anticipatory goal responses' – in their vain attempt to provide a non-mental account of mental life). Only in this way will we exert influence over the pernicious experience of time. And we may also contrive to achieve, in our own attenuated way, the intriguing state that cognitive psychologist Nicholas Humphreys has dubbed the ‘extended moment’ – a theoretical proposition by which time itself can be thickened.
Where is the hand of kairos in all this? In the spirit of the transformation. Kairos is the essential purpose, the archetype of all purposes. It’s the place where the ripples come to land from the stone tossed in a lake, the unknown doors that open when the decision is made to act. It’s the possible destination of every possible journey, the outcome of which is unknown other than there will be an outcome, and it will make its sense on arrival. If the story of Cinderella is to be the paradigm for all of life’s happily-ever-after experiences then we should take our inspiration from the pumpkin not the coach – from the condition of hopefulness, rather than the illusion of what might be hoped for.
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