To Liberate

Yesterday, we painted. I was late. I am always late.

I recently read about two concepts of time: chronos and kairos. Our shared concept of time comes from chronos—a time measured carefully in uniform blocks and bits and milli-moments. A standardized time, the world marching forward in sync. In the painting class, I was late and they were out of workstations, but they had extra canvases and paint and a kind soul lent me a brush when I needed one.

There is an older sense of time—kairos—which is relative. It is a time that flows around us and our movement through this world, our meaningful interactions with it. Relative time, the opportune time, the right moment.

In chronos time, the rest of the class started painting at 2:30 PM, Eastern Standard Time. In kairos time, I began painting when a friendly medical student lent me an extra brush. The rest of the class painted step 2—the upper sky, in sync at 2:40 PM, Eastern Standard Time. I painted it after step 1.

How much more well suited might our days be to our lived, subjective reality if we were to liberate ourselves, to liberate one another into kairos time? I will see the next patient when I have met the needs of this patient. I will go to the next meeting when my resident is calm and stops pulling tissues from the box. I will leave for work when my 7-year-old has finished passionately explaining the nature of his morning Lego creation. We will lend our neighbor a paintbrush when they need it.