Kairos | It’s Not “Travel Time Is Kairos Time” but “Travel Time Can Be Kairos Time”

Travel time is, usually, Kairos Time.

Of course, if you’re traveling for work and you’re staying Monday through Thursday at the Budget Business Hotel for Mid-Level Managers (complete with orange-juice-like liquid on tap in the breakfast nook), it’s going to be a bit more work.

But other than that, if you’re on holiday, on vacation, on a trip outside of your regular world, if you can sneak away with your thoughts for even a few minutes, you can turn a few minutes, a few seconds even, of time outside of your regular world, into a world of delight, of delirious deliciousness, and maybe even of dreams.

I’ve written often about how the dream of travel doesn’t have to be the candlelit dinner on the Eiffel Tower as fireworks explode, the sun sets, and you propose marriage on your knee with a bouquet of roses.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the movies.

That’s not even the movies–that’s a cheesy movie.

Travel time can be Kairos time.

Travel time can become Kairos time.

Kairos time is a time that you have (some) control over.

There’s a quote that I’m not going to look up but it’s something like,

“Life is not what happens to you but how you react to what happens to you.”

If you’re walking in the streets of Prague and you look up and see an architectural wonder (which tends to happen on pretty much every single block of this magnificent city), you have a few options:

1. “Huh?” You didn’t notice because you’re looking at your phone.
2. “Oh, that’s nice.” You look up, don’t really take it in, and that’s it.
3. “Oh, wow, that’s pretty.” You take that extra second to appreciate it–even if architecture isn’t your thing.
4. “Whoa, wait a minute, how did that they do that swirly part, the blue stuff, near the top?” You’re paying attention, you see more and more detail.
5. You stop, you look up. “It’s a magical masterpiece.” OK, OK, I’ll calm down here, but you let the beauty of the scene come to you or, as we talked about yesterday, you receive it, you allow it, you surrender to it.

Fine, maybe #4 and #5 are at bit over the top. And of course, you don’t want to be the one who, every 5 seconds, gushes and sighs and moans in pleasure at every leaf that falls from a tree (because then your Kairos is becoming your Chronos), but you get the idea: beauty and magic is all around you, it’s just a question of letting it in.

It’s morning, not even that early, and I did the OPPOSITE of fasting last night (Indian food!) but I’m here writing. My wife is talking to my brother-in-law on the couch and there is only one reason I’m writing this morning: because I challenged myself to a 30-day write-every-single-day experiment that started July 17, 2024.

We have a choice as to how we react to our travels (and to our daily Chronos time). We can go all Pollyanna and love every second or despise every moment but ideally it’s somewhere in between … and a little closer to Anna ideally.

I’m going to end with my favorite subtitle of my book Decide:

“There’s usually a choice. It’s usually yours.”

Below is my video from the other day as we approached Prague after the night on the European Sleeper train. The audio is kinda terrible but hopefully the message comes through.