The Sentinel Evening Post: Aristotle And The Art of Kairos

Aristotle

There will come a time in your life (it might be tonight or it might be next year) when you have to say something to someone you love, and there will only be one chance to say it.

This is what the ancient Greeks called kairos. Kairos means the right time. It is the opportune time. If you wait or if you delay, then this moment will pass by forever. It is the breath before an apology. It is the second before a kiss. It is when somebody says something cruel, and you have only one chance to call them out on it.

In ancient Greek philosophy, phronesis meant practical wisdom, and a big part of this comes in recognizing there is a right time to do something. There is a right time to say sorry to your friends. There is a right time to be brave. There is no point bolting the stable doors after the horses have left. Today we measure time by clocks, calendars, and notifications, but none of these tell us anything about which moments actually matter. We can know exactly how long something takes and have no idea whether we should be doing it at all.

Aristotle argued that we can train our phronesis over a lifetime of small choices by paying attention and taking stock of what we got right and what we missed. Kairos is a challenge (it is a test from the universe). It will arrive unannounced on an ordinary day, and wisdom comes in being ready to pounce at the exact right moment.