Beautiful Summer - Kalokairi

Fig 1. Summer BBQ

I learnt a new word to describe summer:

“kalokairi comes from two Greek words meaning fine or beautiful (kalos) and time or moment (kairos). Now “fine time” might not seem an especially insightful formulation for summer, but you need to remember that kairos is not just any old time. Kairos is the proper time, the unique, unrepeatable, propitious moment, as opposed to chronos, that deadly kind of time which grinds on relentlessly, linear, unstoppable, consuming all things.” FT weekend 9th Aug 2008.

Fig 2. Chilling in the shade

So chronos marches on but kairos are seared in your mind forever. Measured chronologically, summers are short, but it also opens up the possibility of kairological time. Can you remember how you felt as a child at the beginning of the summer holidays? Golden, lazy, full-leafed days, stretching on for 8 to 10 weeks – an eternity.

Fig 3. the joys of gelato

As a “responsible” adult, summer holidays don’t happen anymore, but my kairological memories “effortlessly put to flight all those deadly intervening stretches of mechanical routine, boredom and anxiety”, and brings me back to the redemptive moments.

Fig 4. Home made jeopardy games

What brings on this transition from chronology to kairology? One of my favourite is the half an hour after a football game. Lounging around in the leafy-shade with your football pals, talking nonsense, the cicadas make their usual cacophony, a mild breeze stirs the leaves, the joker amongst us plays his pranks, laughter-laziness-contentment all round. Moments like these have pretty much retained the same essence regardless of chronological time.

Fig 5. Apres footie

I was told that animals have no concept of chronological time: “nothing more pitiful than a dog trudging in the wake of a clock-time-obsessed master, not allowed to sniff that tempting tree or lamp post for fear of putting out the schedule that the dog will never comprehend.”

Fig 6. Paper chase

As I sit in the office today, I bring on my kalokairi to break free from the leash of my chrono-obsessed masters. The long shadows at summer’s dusk, treehouses and secret dens, climbing walls, codes and missions, homemade explosives, Nintendo wrestling, smokey arcades, Pims and lemonade by the Cam, Mayballs and garden parties, swimming in Walden Pond, paper plane competitions, strawberry picking… Moments like these will ensure that I never grow up.

Fig 7. Summer!

What are your kalokairi moments?