When clients or students ask me which book they should read on intercultural negotiations, I usually have just one answer: “The Culture Map” by Erin Meyer. To be fair, there is also “When Cultures Collide” from Richard Lewis. But The Culture Map has always been the one I return to. Probably because it starts where everything starts for me. With words.
Language has always been one of my obsessions, so it is no surprise that high-context languages and high-context cultures had such a strong impact on me. English, for example, draws sharp distinctions. Between journey and travel. Between wedding and marriage. Between paradise and heaven. Each word defines a boundary, narrows meaning, fixes a concept in place. Italian sits somewhere in between. Less rigid, more elastic. We say viaggio, matrimonio, paradiso. On the opposite end, you find languages like Chinese, which suggest more than they explain. They do not spell everything out; they invite you to “read the air”. There is no singular or plural in the way we understand it. A grammar that does not cage meaning, but lets it breathe. I am exaggerating, of course. But the direction is clear.
This morning, during meditation, my thoughts drifted from language to time, mixing all of this together.
We speak about time as if it were a single thing, or a single word. A neutral, objective dimension that can be measured, segmented, optimized. The Ancient Greeks, however, knew better. They had two words for time: Chronos and Kairos (Χρόνος and Καιρός).
Chronos (which by the way is the root of “chronology” and similar words) is the time we know intimately. The time of clocks and calendars. Of schedules, deadlines, and routines. It is linear, sequential, divisible. It is the time of productivity, of planning, of milestones and roadmaps. Chronos asks how much, how long, and by when.
Kairos is something entirely different. Kairos is the right time. The opportune moment. It is not about quantity, but about quality. Not about speed, but about readiness. Kairos is seasonal and cannot be measured, only recognized. It cannot be forced, only welcomed.
And yet, I often feel that we have deeply misunderstood Kairos. Or worse, that we have erased it altogether. We live as if Chronos were the only time that exists. We have become its disciplined servants, mistaking constant motion for progress and perpetual busyness for value.
We obsess over productivity, to-do lists, targets, and metrics, and in doing so we lose something essential: our ability to sense whether this is the right moment. Our capacity to wait. To let ideas, decisions, and even ourselves mature. We no longer ask, “Is this the right time?” We only ask, “Am I checking all the boxes on my todo list?”
Our relationship with time is profoundly distorted. We have lost touch with inner seasons, with rhythms that cannot be rushed without breaking something along the way. Everything must be accelerated, delivered, performed. Even reflection feels like a luxury we cannot afford.
To me, reclaiming Kairos does not mean slowing down. It means learning to listen again. To distinguish between acting because the schedule demands it and acting because the moment calls for it. Between filling time and inhabiting it.
Maybe the real privilege today is not having more time. It is having a wiser, more humane relationship with the time we already have.
