Finding a Kairos Mentality in a Chronos Reality
How often have you passed through a period of challenge, telling yourself or being told by others that it has to come to an end sometime, yet knowing that such a conclusion is still a far way off? C.S. Lewis, in his A Grief Observed, similarly writes that: “Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.” You may have had this experience when training for a sport, studying for an exam, learning a new skill for work, or healing from an illness or surgery. In these periods of requisite perseverance, recognizing the remaining number of days, hours, and even minutes that we have to endure before we reach our goal can be overwhelming and disheartening. Since we are physical beings, we are unfortunately stuck in this linear reality of time. Our body, spirit, and mind can contribute to keeping us confined in this chronological consciousness. However, due to our being both temporal and eternal beings, we do have faculties that allow us to escape, or transcend, into a different perspective, if only periodically. This ability to access a more overarching view of time is primarily achieved through the faculty of the will. It is essentially by willing the good of another — or loving — that we can come to achieve this kairos mentality in the midst of our chronos reality.
This dualistic definition of time has an origin in ancient Greek philosophy. The two characterizations are, as above, chronos and kairos. Chronos is time seen longitudinally. Words such as “chronological” and “chronic” have there root in this term. It is measured by seconds, minutes, days, years, and decades, and recorded on clocks, watches, phones, calendars, and schedules. Our modern, fast-paced world by far sees time most often in this way. Contrarily, kairos, can be defined as “the right, critical, or opportune moment.” It has been termed the “eternal present” and the “eternal now.” Others simply describe it as “God’s time.” In the words of Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr, it is “deep time.” He also proposes that it is:
“Those moments where you say, ‘Oh my God, this is it. I get it,’ or, ‘This is as perfect as it can be,’ or, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this,’ or, ‘This moment is summing up the last five years of my life,’ things like that where time comes to a fullness, and the dots connect.”
In the positive moments of life, entering into kairos can be easy and exhilarating. The psychological concept of being in “flow” comes to mind here. It can seem as if things are as they ought to be and that they just make sense. However, in the difficult periods of life, it can be challenging to find this same sensation. Being creatures who live in a world characterized by birth and death, creation and destruction, and beginnings and ends, we understandably default toward living our existence with a chronos perspective. However, if we want to rise above the limitations of our chronological conundrums, we must learn how, from time to time, to take on a more kairo-logical mindset.
Our body primarily keeps us constrained in our chronic conditions. Being made of matter that grows and decays, our bodies are inherently chronological. Our earthy lives are defined by the number of days, years, and decades that we live, as evidenced by our celebrations of birthdays and life milestones. Important periods of our lives — childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and senescence — are recognized at certain ages in different cultures. And, unfortunately, our bodies portray chronos through illness, deterioration, and death. How too you likely know the sensation of despair when wondering, “How long will it take for me to get over this sickness or recover from that surgery?” In the midst of the process of healing, we may feel like we are caught at sea between the two shores of our previous and future healthy states. The waves of time lap up against the boats of our bodies, with unending, undulating pain, fatigue, nausea, etc. Additionally, the surrounding fog keeps us in the dark about how far we are from approaching the shore of restoration. At times, it can become difficult to even remember what it feels like to be whole. So, we have to simply remain in our life boat, at the mercies of the tides of time and the rate at which our body can recover. Likewise, the latter periods of our lives are also obscured by the esoteric evidence of aging. Each day, one may wake up, with a new, vague symptom of senility, be it an additional aching joint or another forgotten name, date, or fact. Nonetheless, despite the best medical practices, these corporeal processes repeat and progress throughout our linear lives.
Similarly, our spirit feeds into our chronological context. By “spirit,” here I am referencing our appetites and emotions. According to the philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, our emotions are manifestations of our sensitive appetites (versus the intellective appetites). These faculties deal with how we respond to things in our external environments. The sensitive appetites are divided into concupiscible and irascible. The first deals with seeking pleasant goods and avoiding pleasant evils. The latter aids one in pursuing arduous goods and avoiding arduous evils. Further, our irascible appetites arise from our concupiscible appetites. For example, we may have a concupisible desire to grab a tasty meal with close friends. From this first appetite arises an irascible desire of hope that we can obtain it, which encourages us to contact our friends and find a time to meet. Contrarily, we may have a concupisible aversion toward meeting new people. Therefore, we may develop a fear about putting ourselves into new social situations, which results in us never even having the chance to attempt to achieve our goal. We likely have experienced how these passions can similarly hyper-focus us on the particulars of a given situation and trap us in the details of our difficulties, leading us to be controlled by these fluctuating feelings all too often.
Additionally, our mind can keep us caught in our chronos perspective. Each of our minds have particular faculties. Some have listed them as: memory, imagination, intuition, perception, reason, and will. Memory and imagination can lead us to spiral into depression about our past and anxiety about our future. Intuition and perception may make us believe certain false things about others or ourselves because we are limited to our own mental schemas, such that we can never know what is going through another’s mind and we can never fully understand the significance of an event at the moment in which it occurs. Too, our reason and will can fall prey to disordered appetites or emotions, making us react toward others or ourselves in certain deleterious ways.
However, it is only when we choose to will the good of another, be that another person or our own, entire self, that we can step into kairos time, even if only for a brief moment. It is this choice to love that draws us out of our present predicaments into the eternal now. During this escape, we put our temporary troubles on pause and attempt to look at others and ourselves through God’s eyes. We aim to get a glimpse into how He sees things from His more grand vantage point. And, after finding this perspective, we ought to try our best to bring some of those realizations back with us into the ever-passing present.
By willing the good of our bodies, we can aid them in our journey through chronos time. For instance, when we are bedraggled by tiredness from challenging ourselves physically or from succumbing to an illness, we can choose to will the good of our bodies, wether it be temporarily pleasant or painful. Sometimes that may mean pushing ourselves a little further toward a difficult goal (e.g. in a sport or in a diet), swallowing a bitter medicine, or cleaning out an infected wound. Contrarily, it may also mean taking a day off from exercising to rest and recover, napping to allow our bodies to heal themselves, or asking others for help during our healing process. Essentially, it comes down to prudently willing our own good in the midst of our struggles, doing that which we ought to help our bodies in the long run. This can aid in relieving the frustration and fatigue of enduring physical hardship because we can consciously do something in the moment that we know will move our whole self further down the road to recovery. As an additional note, willing another’s good in the midst of our own physical struggles can also help us because it shifts our perspective from focusing too much on our own suffering toward appreciating the fact that we can help to relieve someone else’s pain. Fundamentally, it draws us out of ourselves into relationship with someone else. This helps us to transcend our self-centered chronos into a more communal kairos.
When it comes to your spirit, choosing to love over being caught up in our appetites and emotions may be a little more clear. Often, our appetites lead us to seek that which is pleasant and to avoid that which is painful. However, just as true is the fact that choosing comfort and avoiding difficulty is not always the best choice for us. Rather, our egotistical emotions can often eventually lead us to think or act in ways that are detrimental to others and ourselves. Nevertheless, if whenever we experience negative or selfish appetites and emotions, we take a step back from our chronological timeline, and enter into deep time, we can more easily choose to will the good of another or ourselves. For example, if someone makes us angry and we have a desire to react harshly toward them, if contrarily we remove ourselves, at least temporarily, from our contemptible chronos and enter into a more kind kairos, we can more easily choose to be benevolent toward them instead. Additionally, if in place of feeling self-conscious about our lack of a certain skill or talent, we choose to will our own good, by humbly celebrating our positive qualities, we can again escape our sad self-centeredness and momentarily enter into witnessing the wholistic glory of how God sees us.
Evenmoreso, our minds can shift from chronos to kairos through our attempts to will the good. Instead of memory and imagination keeping us trapped in depression and anxiety, they can help us to restore faith, hope, and trust in our lives (as I highlight in “Omnia Cooperantur in Bonum: On Faith, Hope, and Trust”). Intuition and perception, rather than making us believe certain false things about others and ourselves, can help us to give others and ourselves the benefit of the doubt (as I note in “It’s Something I Deal With” and “Overcoming Your Negativity Bias”) and to remember that giving something time is often the best way to come to understand why certain events occur in our lives (as a I describe in “Only Time Will Tell: Time as the Best Medicine”). Lastly, our reason and will, in place of being misled by disordered appetites or emotions, can guide us to learn or can remind us of certain truths about others and ourselves and can help us to put those realities into practical application (as I mention in “Crossing the Liminal Space”).
In conclusion, two words — contemplation and providence — come to mind for me. Contemplation essentially means “to mark out a space for observation,” and providence has at its root the significance of “looking ahead.” By moving from our chronos reality toward a kairos mentality, we can more readily come to contemplate the providential moments in our lives, that occur when we do our best to live for the good of others and our whole selves. Additionally, an old philosophical phrase — sub specie aeternitatis, meaning “in the light of eternity” — concordantly describes the view that we should use toward all aspects of our lives. Looking at the difficulties of life through the kairo-logical perspective of eternity, we can come to recognize what is important and what is trivial. Only then can we more easily see how all the anxiety-provoking details and fatigue-inducing particulars of life pale in comparison to that which comes from striving to will the good of others and our whole selves in the midst of our struggles.
Being creatures of body, spirit, and mind, we are uniquely caught between these two perspectives of time. Clearly, our material characteristics, draw us toward the linear chronos of minutes, days, and years. As such, we can become dragged down by the weight of physical detriments, disordered passions, and muddled minds. However, thankfully, we are not confined to this type of existence. As rational animals with eternal souls, we are able to, in the midst of our chronological timelines, partake in a glimpse of the eternal now. When we step back from our chronos reality and take on a kairos mentality, we can come to better understand the difficulties of our lives in a greater context. We do this primarily though love, which is willing the good of another. Whenever we get caught up in the moment, if we instead take a step back and think, “How can I will the good of someone else or of my whole self in this moment?”, we are able to shift ourselves from becoming stuck in our distracting senses, controlling desires, and warped thought processes, and instead move toward a more wholistic understanding of who we are and who we are meant to be.
