Polina on Substack

Time is the friend of someone who is properly positioned and the enemy of someone poorly positioned.

Time is the friend of someone who is properly positioned and the enemy of someone poorly positioned.

kairos, a specific, opportune moment that stands apart – a time that is timeless, perpetual, “a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through if success is to be achieved.” xxvi

The Greeks valued this qualitative view deeply, so much so that they had a second word for time: Kairos. Kairos expresses the quality, not the quantity, of time.

the ancient Greeks distinguished two kinds of time, “kairos (opportunity or the propitious moment) and chronos (eternal or ongoing time). While the first . . . offers hope, the second extends a warning.” Kairos is the time of cleverness, chronos the time of wisdom.

Kairos moments, like pêche à pied, are what I call magic windows: those periods of creative flow that often occur when we are immersed in activities that capture our full attention, when we spend time with loved ones, or when we are engaged in self-reflection. If you’ve ever felt like an instant was suspended in time, as if your sphere of conscious