Kairos

In the Fight Club novel, there is a passage where Jack “meets” Tyler for the first time. It’s different from what we see in the film, where the meeting happens on a flight. In Palahniuk’s text, Tyler is dragging pieces of driftwood into position on a beach. He spends hours doing this, and the result is a fleeting moment of perfection.

“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.”

The Ancient Greeks had a term for this: Kairos time. Whereas Chronos time is quantifiable in the sense of time in a sequence, as measured in units by the clock, Kairos refers to the right time, or the opportune time. Appropriate weather for an occasion, the right time to do this or that thing, and the feelings that come with this.

I’m sure we can all think of a passing instance that has stuck with us at various points. Here’s one of mine:

I like to walk by the bay, in the City of Port Phillip area. Especially during the evenings. It’s one way I can process the various comings and goings of the day, the week, or the year. Sort of like a computer clearing its cache.

A few years ago, I was on such a walk. I had just passed through Elwood, across the canal and the bridge with the padlocks all over it, and was entering St. Kilda Beach. Past the skatepark, I just kept on going. The place was busier than usual, even by summer standards. Families with children, playing on the beach. Over here, you had a bunch of dudes with an esky and some instruments, playing music, hanging around, drinking and laughing. Over there, some geeky kids with a camera setup, filming themselves doing who knows what. The lights of the beachside cafes and restaurants. Off in the distance was the Catani Gardens, which was fenced off and in festival mode, with a ferris wheel and all manner of music and partying going on. Then, of course, the usual assortment of addicts, tourists, locals, buskers, all framed by concrete and Melbourne summer sunset.

The beach scene was alive and in rare form. And yet, with everything happening all at once, there was this sense of stillness and harmony that came with it. Everything in its place, during the moment where I passed through. I just kept walking, absorbing it all. I couldn’t imagine myself being anywhere else, doing anything else. That one moment of perfection.

“Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig,” Epictetus once said. “If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.” The mind needs rest from the demands of work and life, and walking that evening gave me that. To slow down, look around, and just take things in.

And it all happened at that exact time and place, everything lined up so completely and beautifully.

When Chuck Palahniuk wrote Fight Club, he was struggling to balance all manner of bills and loans to support himself while allowing himself the time to write. He had nothing to his name but a bed and a desk. After years of trying (unsuccessfully) to write “fake Stephen King novels that no agent would touch,” he pieced together the characters and themes that would make his first novel. One chapter led to another, and things developed from there.

Could I do things the way Palahniuk did? I wouldn’t know unless I walked the same path, but in my life and line of work, I like to feel like I’m building towards something. And while they may be few and far between, I’m happy to simply enjoy those moments of perfection when they occur, however brief they may be.

Here’s to the next year.