11/02/2025
I'm going to get a lot of clients in this week who are feeling off-kilter because of the season shift and time change. This was the most poetic reflection on this 'in between time" that I've come across, I hope you enjoy it as you take an extra hour of downtime today....
Quality time, By Melissa Kirsch
The hour between dog and wolf, or ālāheure entre chien et loup,ā if you prefer, is, I think youāll agree, the dreamiest way to refer to twilight. (I will entertain arguments for āthe gloamingā and āthe violet hour,ā but I donāt suspect litigants will get very far.) Itās that time just after sunset when the atmosphere is still partly illuminated by the sun, when the light is ambiguous and the sky canāt choose between blue and black. Night hasnāt yet fully fallen and we are in the borderland between day and dark. One might be forgiven, in this threshold moment, for mistaking a dog for a wolf, for mistaking safety for danger, for feeling slightly off.
Daylight saving time ends tomorrow. That first Sunday in November is a full day suspended between dog and wolf. Weāre still grasping at the corn-silk tendrils of summer just as winter gets more insistent. An undertide of confusion persists: Evening car accidents increase, circadian rhythms reset, the moonās out before dinner. That space in between is strange and destabilizing until we get used to it.
Each year I assume thereās a wolf hiding in the earlier sunsets, that thereās a certain sorrow implicit when daylight decreases. The dog days are literally and metaphorically over. In the northeast U.S., spring and summer are seasons you can pet. Fall and winter have fangs.
Not everyone feels this. I always consult my friend Leigh at this time of year to try to catch some of her glee. āLicense to hunker!ā she nearly bellowed at me when I reminded her we change the clocks tomorrow. āSorry, itās 4:30, I canāt do anything more today. Time to have a drink and watch your shows!ā I love her delirium, and I want to borrow some of it to wear like a shawl until spring.
The ancient Greeks experienced time in two ways. Chronos was the clock time that governs our lives, bedtime and estimated departure time, the hour gained or lost. Kairos referred to a more figurative measure of time ā the right time, the moment of opportunity, the sacred window for action. In order to recognize kairos, we have to be aware, awake, present. Madeleine LāEngle wrote: āThe child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos.ā
When I think about the mystical possibilities of kairos, it seems mundane, boring, uncreative to be blue about a lost chronological hour. In any season, there is kairos. These moments of possibility, of serendipity, arrive in all seasons, but we have to be awake to seize them. The stillness of the colder, darker months ā that license to hunker ā is a time to slow down and observe. What windows of luck and chance and coincidence emerge when weāre a little quieter, a little more observant? Iāll be observing the sun setting an hour earlier tomorrow, wondering about kairos, those moments of opportunity in the offing that the clock and the calendar canāt touch.
