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Gracious Word: Kairosclerosis

3/4/2014

 
Kairosclerosis
Word every Gracious Individual should know: Kairosclerosis

Definition: K
airosclerosis; Greek; noun
1. The moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.

Why I love this word:
Kairosclerosis is from the Greek word: kairos, “the opportune moment” + sclerosis, “hardening.” The Ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. Chronos is quantitative and linear—the ticking of the Western clock. Kairos is more qualitative, referring to moments that are indeterminate and sublime, when something special happens, when God speaks or the wind shifts, when a door is left open between one minute and the next. 

Kurt Vonnegut liked to say, “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.' I think the opposite is true. Notice when you’re sad, and dive in and wallow and examine it and pick it apart with forceps and calipers. The sadness will lose its vitality and harden over time into something benign and foreign, like an emotional fossil. Let the crappy minutes burst into flames under the magnifying glass, but leave the sublime moments alone."

Can anyone relate to this word? I have been feeling this for quite some time now. It's not depression because I have nothing to be depressed about. I have loving friends and family, I live in a gracious city and attend a great school. I have a lot of things to be grateful for. When I lay in bed in the morning trying to wake up or right before I drift off into a sleep in the evening, I go over all the things I am grateful for. I become frightened that those things will be taken from me that day. 

Photograph from Tumblr


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    Gracious Words

    With the Word of the Day and the Monthly Book Club, this page is for the intellectual reader or for anyone who wants to improve their vocabulary.

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