Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Cookie jar

I'm going to praise my book writing friend Mark, again. Maybe it's just because I am where I am and I'm reading that into what he is saying, but even if I am, it doesn't seem like far of a jump. He spoke of how we are perpetually busy and that drives us. In circles. He mentioned briefly something about time that my friend John Charles Kerr talked about more in depth somewhere, about kairos and chronos. I would try to describe them to you, but I'll steal it from somewhere else.

Kairos (καιρός) is an ancient Greek word meaning the "right or opportune moment". The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies "a time in between", a moment of undetermined period of time in which "something" special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.

I got that from here http://www.reference.com/search?r=13&q=Kairos

Back to Mark, he talked of 'a holy must' that everyone has, or is given. That was definitely his focus, but we went into it more, and the more we went in, the less it made sense. That might be because one of us confused 'must' for 'musk', and that kept messing me up. It might have also had to do with me correcting information that wasn't fact even though it was presented as such. It was irrelevant either way. Focus was cast to the ground and trampled by wombats.

It fit, since this week I'm in now feels ridiculously busy. There is work and youth stuff and dentist appointments and small errands, like changing banks and fixing flat tires. And I found another friend named Chuck. He was pretty up there politically, and wrote a book. I don't know a thing about politics, but he said he didn't know much about writing, so it's okay.

In the end, it is harder to be responsible.

1 comment:

MC said...

I learned a little about kairos and chronos in school. Check it out when you go to that foriegn country man. Apparently they have a kairos culture whereas ours is very chronos. Although as far as westerners go, we are west coast westerners, so we've got a bit more going for us kairosly i hear than most.

I hear mark has some good thoughts. My math teacher was a fan of his. I think i have that book that you're talking about but haven't read it yet (unless your book is my book for some reason...)