The Greeks had two words for time.

The first was Chronos. The minutes, hours, days. The years. The calendar. What can be counted, scheduled and spent.

This is the only time modern culture recognizes.

The second was Kairos.

And they considered it the more important of the two.

Kairos is the moment within the moment. The time that is qualitatively different from all the time around it.

Not measured in minutes. Measured in meaning.

It's the moment you turn away from the noise of this world and something steady rises to meet you.

It doesn't negotiate with the noise. It simply arrives. Your own truth. Indifferent to everything happening around it. Suddenly clearer than everything competing with it.

That is Kairos.

It's also the moment love arrives and reorganizes you without asking permission.

Before and after. Not a date on a calendar — a shift in the quality of everything. The world the same on the outside. You unmistakably different on the inside.

That is Kairos too.

We have been taught to manage Chronos. But no one taught us to recognize Kairos. To honor the moments that can't be measured precisely because they're the ones that matter most.

✦

You have lived in Kairos. You just didn't have a word for it. Now you do.

— original poem | @tabo66