This is the last ride out. Its said that the chronometer, or the modern clock, was invented by ancient monks to keep track of their prayer cycle. Before that, the earth made its way around the sun as it spun on its own axis and ancient observers broke the long arc of life into years and days. The Greeks tracked the sun’s shadows and the Romans split the shadows into quarters, but throughout, time was fungible. It was manipulated around our human activities whether they be legal, cultural or social. In effect, we controlled what time did to our lives. But the monks changed that: as time became trackable, as the quarters were dissected down to hours and minutes and seconds, time became secular, agnostic and in a very real way, in control of us.

As humans, we are split between living our lives in kairos time or chronos time. Inevitably, chronos time is imposed upon us or mostly, we impose it upon ourselves. We are pushed and punished and rewarded by the chronometer, we look back at the chapters of our own chronology and make assessments on our worth and invite others to join in: at this point I did this, at that point I did that. We impose deadlines, mark appointments and coordinate our calendars in an effort to meet expections determined or undetermined, expecting reward or fearing punishment for the slightest adherence or disobedience to the artificiality of it. But it is for naught. In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare says: “time hath, my lord, a wallet at its back, wherein he puts alms for oblivion, a great sized monster of ingratitudes. Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d as fast as they are made, forgot as soon as done.” Hundreds of years later, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd at the tender age of 29 writes preciently: “…you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find, 10 years has got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” And we run and we run to catch up with the sun but its sinking. Certainly John Lennon understood this futility when he said, “Life is what happens to you while you were making other plans”.  Chronos time is road rage and impatience with others: you’ve interrupted my race with the clock and you are now my enemy.

The other part of time then is kairos time. This is the ancient time, the time of the Jews and early Christians, the time of the ancient Chinese lords, the Vedic shaman and sub-Saharan tribes. It is the time that is fashionably being recreated amongst the cognoscente as “mindfullness” (which in reality is a great business plan to separate people from their money by teaching them to sit still). But it is not that. Kairos is the space of time where lovers gaze, where mother and child become one, where you can hear your own heartbeat and in that, your own destiny. It is your silent vigil during the agony of a friend’s loss or your constantcy next to a loved one’s triumphful moment. It is the contemplation of your own mortality as a strategy for being alive. As Jerzy Kosinski knew of Chance the gardner, it is simply “Being There”, whether its sitting in the car with your child next to you or actively participating in play with your friends.  Children live in kairos time because kairos makes the most out of the time that we are in: not the minute that just passed, not the day that is to come, but that exact moment we are living in, not peeking away at a smartphone, not responding to a bell, not allowing a gnat’s distraction to interrupt a meaningful conversation. Kairos time is its own reward, it doesn’t need likes or stars or the glowing embers of someone else’s clock. Actors are trained to “be in the moment”, open and receptive to immediate stimuli that allows them to respond in an appropriate way to find their way to a truth. If not, they’re caught “faking it”.  An athlete must live in kairos or else she will falter. 

In Fight Club, Tyler Durden spends hours dragging driftwood logs into position on a beach in a seemingly futile action until: “What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand. Only now the fingers were Nosferatu-long and the thumb was too short, but he said how at exactly four-thirty the hand was perfect. The giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute, and for one perfect minute Tyler had sat in the palm of a perfection he’d created himself. One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”

Personally, I need to reclaim the kairos in my life and to better understand the work that goes into living and appreciating those perfect moments. I always tried to live in the balance, but to be honest the last few years in the face of social media have been too much, not only for me, but for those I’ve seen and heard around me. I believe with everything that’s in me that there is little inherent value in Facebook or Twitter on a personal level, but I’ve allowed myself to succumb to the mythology created by a 23-year old nerdy kid who just wanted to score with girls, I’ve let him convince me that I should sell him my soul to do so. I bought into it.

But now as I prepare to go through the pangs and spasms of withdrawal, I’ll invite you to do the same. There’s value in finding ways to communicate and keeping abreast of each other’s lives, but in reality, I don’t really deserve to have 1,335 friends. I’ve done nothing to earn that friendship other than to post some witty sayings, re-post NYT articles and rant about things I dislike. I’m a person who has always believed in the value and beauty of people, but Facebook especially has showed me sides I wish to no longer view as it has weakened my love for you all. There is a place in business for FB and other social media and I have to navigate that as best as possible, but from a personal level, I believe its more destructive than positive.

So, this is the last FB farewell, at the peak of the sun on the last day of the year. May your next chronological trip around the the glowing ball be filled with kairos; that you gather and fill as many perfect moments as possible and that each of those moments are shared with those who enhance your life. As William Saroyan instructs us, “In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it”.