Take a look at Francisco de Goya’s famous painting, Saturn Devouring His Son, if you have the stomach for it. According to Roman myth, Saturn ate each of his sons the moment after they were born. It takes away everything you have and then it eats you too.
His resemblance to the Grim Reaper is not accidental.Ĭhronos, or Saturn to the Romans, is the stuff that kills you. A weary, bent-backed old man with a long grey beard, carrying a scythe and an hourglass. You’re probably familiar with the personification of Chronos: just think of old Father Time. The Greeks liked to personify just about everything. It’s difficult to describe that feeling if you’ve never experienced it, but if you have, I hope my description can give you a name to call it by and a better understanding of it, as well as clues to seeking out more of it. The world takes a breath, and in the pause, before it exhales, fates can be changed. Further, it refers to the right moment, the opportune moment. Where Chronos is quantitative, kairos is qualitative. It refers to clock time - time that can be measured - seconds, minutes, hours, years. The first was Chronos, which we still use in words like chronological and anachronism.
The ancient Greeks had two words for time, and kairos was the second. One of the most important words I’ve learned over the last decade is “ kairos. So learning new words to describe aspects of the human experience can help us grow. Here, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is saying that if we don’t have language to describe something, we can’t talk about that thing - we can’t even think about it. “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.”
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