We are social creatures, built for connection. Almost like a hive organism, the whole human population has become an interconnected web of information. As I awake in the morning to the alarm on my smart phone, I contemplate how to start my day. The evening before, I had looked at my schedule to determine when to wake up. I give myself an hour to just make it out of bed and get ready for the day. If I don’t remember how the day starts, I check the calendar on my phone. I begin the connections into the world. Checking emails and phone messages, the interconnections with time lag. Returning phone calls. Scheduling appointments. Text messages scatter through the day. Perhaps this day has face-to-face encounters with patient visits, friends for lunch, business meetings.
Chronos
I have removed the television one-way blast of information into my day. Social media, I keep to a minimum. I’ve turned off many alerts to my phone. Time, I have discovered, is a valuable resource. My time disappears in additional taps on screen devices, clicks on the computer, rabbit holes into Internet web pages, reading through material for projects, and writing drafts and recording ideas. Time is marching on, devouring me whole — just like the old Greek god, Chronos, devouring his children. (He eats his children because he learns that one day one of his children will defeat him.) The god Chronos is “Old Father Time,” black hooded robe, face hidden, scythe, and bony finger. He eats me alive. Time disappears in seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, decades, a lifetime.
But then, Kairos steps in… The Greeks had two words for time — chronos and kairos. As a younger god, Kairos is youthful and vibrant with a lock of hair on his forehead and bald at the back of his head. He is the personified god of Opportunity. You can grab opportunity by that lock of hair when his is coming towards you, but much more difficult to grab opportunity when he leaves. Kairos represents the opportune time, the right time, the sacred time.
“To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, a time to die…”
~ Ecclesiastes 3, The Bible
In the Greek translation of the Bible, “time” in this verse is kairos.
… And then, Kairos steps into my day.
Within the sacred time of connection, often in the face-to-face encounters. Time no longer follows linear rules, it expands and contracts in a lunch with friends, in a moment of empathy with a patient, in a connection that touches something inside me, in those rich moments that are timeless. In those moments, I remember to slow down, drop into the present moment, and let go of linear time. There is an initial fear that chronos will devour me, but each episode of kairos feeds me.
Living the Present Moment, the project begins
Sometime in 2015, I started an unofficial project interviewing people on the topic “living the present moment.” From unofficial conversations to recorded interviews, I collected ideas and thoughts to explore a topic I was hungry for. I talked to friends, friends of friends, strangers that became new friends. In those moments, people gave me their stories and rich connection of kairos. Something in this project was feeding me. (Even before I became a storyteller, I had discovered collecting stories as interviews.)
In 2017, I started an online study group to present information on the topic. I soon discovered that it was easier to record a conversation than create a new presentation each week. Conversation accesses wisdom that we sometimes don’t know that we have. While my conversation topic was always about “living the present moment,” I began to discover the richness was not in the information but in the stories of the people that I interview. My fascination with the art of the interview began. I started listening to interviews, not just for the information, but with an appreciation of the facilitated connection and skill of interviewing.
My shift to a podcast began in 2018 with a change of focus and a new tagline: “people of passion and purpose, doing interesting things, living the present moment.” I discovered that passion is contagious; passion is what brings us alive. Finding passion and purpose is what brings us fully into the present moment, brings us into kairos, sacred time.
I continue to discover people and stories that tap into their passions:
- Luke Burhenn is passionate about the music program that he attends with his toddler. It is not his career, just something he loves to do.
- KT Alaimo went to school to study history, but followed his strange passion to become an organic farmer.
The art of the interview is the art of conversation. In this age of information and time-efficient communication, I have rediscovered kairos, sacred time, and sacred connection. The interviews give me a chance to slow down and connect in conversation.
The Art of Conversation
Sustained Coherent Meaningful Conversation is becoming a lost art. Technology connects us in ways that we often transmit information in small bites without other essentials of connection. The skill of person-to-person connection, empathy, reading body language and vocal inflections, is one that is absorbed through practice and engagement. Not just looking for data and information, we must connect to stories that transmit experience and return to “feeling” each other.
The art of conversation is not just how to talk, but more importantly how to listen. How can we walk away engaged, inspired, and connected?
Celeste Headlee is a host on public radio and author of We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter. Her main advice is one that I have discovered to be true.
“Be interested in other people. Be prepared to be amazed.”
Here are some of Celeste Headlee’s rules of conversation: how to talk and how to listen. In her TED talk (see below), she begins by saying forget what you have been told about ways to “show” that you are paying attention.
“There is no reason to show that you are paying attention, if in fact, you are paying attention.”
10 Rules of Conversation
- Don’t multitask. Be present.
- Don’t pontificate. Enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn. Set aside your personal opinions and open up to the listener.
- Use open ended questions. Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
- Go with the flow. Let the stories and ideas come (and let them go if the conversation has moved on). Be in the moment.
- If you don’t know, say that you don’t know.
- Don’t equate your experience with theirs. All experiences are individual. Don’t make it about you.
- Try not to repeat yourself. It is condescending and really boring.
- People don’t care about the details of dates and times that you struggle to remember. They care about you, what you are like, and what you have in common.
- Listen. Most of us don’t listen with the intent to understand, but with the intent to reply. Listen to understand.
- Be brief.
“A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the subject.”