Chronos and Kairos in real life
As a 20 year old young man who’s eyes have a perpetual sparkle of life and hands that are fueled by ambition and vision, time is truly valuable.
Outside of the readings that my Intercultural communication class I have currently been reading the The Irrational Man by William Barrett. This book is focused on the facets with which existential philosophy impacts our life.
“The story is told (by Kierkegaard) of the absent-minded man so abstracted from his own life that hardly knows he exists until, one fine morning, he wakes up to find himself dead,” — Barrett.
This is how the book begins, with the urgency of time.
This urgency has gripped all of Western culture and how we have lived our life, with too many options, too many ambitions and the only real limiter to them is time.
However, outside of the western cultures this does not always hold true. Outside of the west time is relative and the most abundant of resources. This is explained and shown through Misreading Scripture. Rather the time is not one of Chronos and chronology focusing on the exatitude and quatifiability of time. Rather, the time is of Kairos, the general thematic time that is focused on the time of the present rather than the past or future.
Like the great poet Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda said, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift… that is why it is called the present.”
Now the application of this is much harder to practice than to preach.
I believe that there has to be a way to look outside of yourself and see beyond the Chronos into the Kairos while still existing in the culture that runs off of the exactitude of time. Barrett speaks on this as necessary for the Existentialist in terms of becoming. To see the uselessness all of our business and striving gives us, but rather to look beyond the immediacy to see how our present effects the future based off of our past.
To boil down my overweighted verbiage; slow down, consider the weight of our actions, and use that insight to live well in the moment.
Barrett and the authors from Misreading Scripture both are christian authors that write on very different subjects and on books that looked at very different applications of the same premises, yet still hammered home some pertinent criticisms on modern western culture. This correlation should hopefully highlight the truth and allow us to better enjoy and flourish in this life.
