Kairos

I decided to title this post after some recent advice I’d given in an interview on SaaSyForce.com because this ancient word has a deep meaning. Kairos is an ancient rhetorical term used to describe time. Ancient Greeks used two terms to describe time: kairos and chronos.

You may know chronos from chronological order, so time is always in order under chronos. Kairos is a word I will never forget because it is special.

Did you ever have such a huge moment in time that there were no words to describe because everything happened all at once? The Greeks had a word and that word is kairos. Let me give you an example.

What time would you say I took the above picture of the Boston waterfront? It could be a sunrise or a sunset, right? Well it was sunset and it is the way the time of day pictured above could be several different times of the day.

This specific moment that I was able to capture in picture represents a “kairos” or a moment that is only determined because I’ve used words to describe it. For a long time, I would spend my days thinking about “doing” something. When I finally found something I liked doing, it was abruptly taken from me. In that kairos, I stopped thinking about doing something and started doing.

I have extended my kairos and I continue to do so.

Do it.