Kairos

The other day I happened across an article in one of the myriad frugal/thrifty newsletters to which I subscribe about the benefits of roasting your own coffee beans. Evidently buying roasted beans is about $8-9 a pound and you can buy and roast them yourself for half that cost. In addition, green beans apparently have an almost indefinite shelf life, as opposed to the already roasted beans, which can rapidly grow stale when exposed to temperature extremes, air, and light. From the perspective of someone who bakes her own bread and will soon be embarking on the adventure of making my own yogurt (I will let you know how that works after this weekend), I found this interesting, despite the fact that I am most decidedly NOT a coffee drinker. But I happened to mention the article to a friend who IS a big coffee drinker. Her comment on the subject was that the savings was not worth the value of her time. In the ensuing friendly debate, she elaborated in economic terms. Her time is worth $x per hour based on her pay scale. She lives in the city, commutes 2 hours a day, and has very limited free time, so in her mind, unless she enjoys something or it saves as much or more than her time is "worth", there's no point. While her argument has logical sense from a business perspective, I found myself outright rejecting the notion of placing an economic value on my free time. I felt that somehow cheapened the true value of my time.

The conversation we had and a book I am currently reading (A Sideways Look At Time) have got me thinking a lot about time. My husband and I both work unconventional hours. He, as a 911 Emergency Dispatcher has the 3pm-11pm shift. I work halftime as a survey research center supervisor on Mondays, Tuesdays, and every other Friday from 5:30-9:30 and Sundays from 1-9, and otherwise, am an adjunct online instructor for a local community college--which allows me to mostly set my own hours. We do not operate on the same schedule as the rest of the world, a point which is frequently commented upon by various and sundry people from friends to family to total strangers. In some of them there is a defensiveness about it--as if we are somehow wrong because we do not adhere to traditional chronological, regimented schedules. My father was shocked and appalled when he called last week, and I was having breakfast at 1 PM (nevermind that I'd already been UP for four hours). Some envy the freedom our unusual schedule permits. We wake and sleep to our own internal clocks. We eat when we are hungry, not because it is "dinner time". We have DVR, so we don't even have to watch our preferred programming at its scheduled time. We are able to live, in many ways, in a much more kairological time. Kairos was the other Greek god of time--the god of qualitative time rather than the absolute, linear time of Chronos. I find this notion of kairological time very appealing in this world that has run amok in its obsession with speed, competition, profit, and winning. This is one reason I would make an abysmal candidate for any form of corporate job. It is also why, despite my ability to see the logic in my friend's very economic argument, I cannot agree with it. Dorothy Lee writes in Freedom and Culture: "For the Greek traditionally, to work against time, to hurry, is to forfeit freedom. His term for hurry means, originally, to coerce oneself." This is exactly how I feel. As a slave to a clock or a corporation or so much of the traditional American world--devoid of freedom. This is what I see in my friends who are a part of that world, where they are stressed and caught up and generally unhappy. By contrast, my unconventional lifestyle is a blessing indeed. I want to stay as much as possible in kairological time. Where I'm not obsessed with time, and hours of the day can go by without my ever checking a clock. Where I can take time out to play with my dogs on some sunny afternoon, or take them for a leisurely (leisurely by these puppies' standards is speed walking!) stroll. Where I can appreciate events and activities and happenings because I actually experienced them instead of worrying about the next thing over the horizon, where I have to be in a year, a day, or an hour. I spent enough of my life riding that train. My falling off of it (or perhaps being thrown, given my lack of choice in much of the matter this past year) , was truly a gift from God.