Between Chronos and Kairos
Relearning the rhythms of change in an age of urgency
We live in an age of acceleration.
The headlines, the metrics, the endless notifications, all of it hums with a single message: time is running out.
I wonder if we are forgetting what time really is.
In Ancient Greek thought, there were two kinds of time.
Chronos was the time of clocks and calendars: measurable, sequential, ruled by productivity and progress. Today, this is the time capitalism runs on. The ticking reminder that we are late, that we are falling behind, that we must hurry if we want to matter.
Kairos, on the other hand, was the time of the soul. That opportune moment when conditions align, when something unseen becomes possible. Kairos reveals openings. It is the time of ripening. Of thresholds. Of emergence.
We have built entire civilizations around chronos. Around speed. Scarcity. The fear of being too late.
To re-learn the rhythms of change, we have to remember kairos.
(also available on YouTube at: https://youtube.com/shorts/ObIV_o54ORI?feature=share)
WINTER
“The end is where we start from.”
Every ending asks for a pause.
Not the efficient pause of resting before more working, but the pause of dissolution.
We have been taught to fear endings. But endings are the compost of change.
They clear space for what cannot yet be seen.
In the winter, the ground looks dead. But underneath it, the soil is alive with decomposition.
Life is being reworked at a cellular level.
The structures of certainty collapse into potential.
The end is not a wall, but a doorway.
When we stop clinging to permanence, time itself softens.
Decay is a part of growth we have forgotten.
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SPRING
“We are called to be ancestors of possibility, rather than descendants of despair.”
Relationships are shifting beneath the surface until a threshold is crossed.
In complex systems, change never happens on schedule.
It happens when tension builds, when networks reorganize, when a hidden threshold is crossed.
It happens when the old patterns can no longer contain the life inside it.
This is kairos. The right moment within time.
To live in kairos is to stop counting minutes and start sensing conditions.
What is ready to emerge?
To be an ancestor of possibility is to live as if the future were porous. Shaping and being shaped by every small act of presence.
SUMMER
“The future is a project, not a prophecy.”
Chronos demands prediction. Kairos invites participation.
When we treat the future as a prophecy, we wait for certainty, for signs of success, for permission.
But when we understand the future as a project, we act as co-creators.
We give our energy to what wants to live.
To act in kairos is not to rush. It’s to respond with attention, humility, and care.
The future is growing through us, now.
AUTUMN
“Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency new things come forth.”
Love and loss are not opposites, but partners.
Release is a form of generosity.
In every falling leaf, the tree is not dying but returning nutrients to the soil that sustains it.
We live through emergencies — personal, political, planetary — and mistake them for endings.
If we listen, crisis becomes life re-organizing itself.
When something falls apart, the question is, “what is this clearing space for?”
Grief becomes a teacher. In autumn, we participate in change without clinging to an outcome.
We let the world turn without losing our belonging in it.
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CLOSING
Time doesn’t run out. It circles back.
Each breath, each season, carries us through endings into beginnings we can’t yet name.
Chronos keeps the time, but Kairos keeps the rhythm.
When we stop racing, we remember how to listen.
FYI: Each week I share stories through For People and Planet, a newsletter focused on climate solutions and hope for the future. You can find it here if you’d like to follow along: forpeopleandpla.net
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With love, Bri Chapman
Always so gorgeous and chronos and kairos have guided me equally, Bri.
Really appreciated this line of yours, kairos' infinite wisdom: "We have been taught to fear endings. But endings are the compost of change."