After years of rushing through life, panicked and convinced she was running out of time, writer Sheree Joseph has learned to embrace what she calls "the juicy life" — a life filled with moments of pleasure and meaning, not just achievements.
Joseph spent years worrying about work, productivity, money, and dating. But most of all, she became fixated on her fertility, which dwindled in her early 30s, forcing choices most women don't face until later. "Pleasure was something bypassed on the way to a goal of being chosen and accepted. In other words, joy was a byproduct," she writes.
A Revelation in Italy
The turning point came during a holiday in Italy. Holding a plastic cup filled with a negroni sbagliato — a "broken negroni" named for its accidental creation — Joseph asked a bartender why an exuberant street party was forming outside. "Just because," he said. "We don't need a reason."
That question — "Why did I need a reason to enjoy myself?" — ran through her. She reflected on all the ways she had been trained to postpone her life, from couch-bound evenings to feeling guilty about spending money on trinkets and flowers during a cost-of-living crisis.
Living on Kairos Time
Joseph now advocates for a life that makes you feel fully alive. She suggests simple pleasures: big belly laughs, tasting a salted tomato in summer, baptismal swims in the sea, and sitting at a long table until night falls. "Wander and meander and do something for no reason at all. Bring back whimsy! Pay attention to the details, to what lights you up," she advises.
She draws on the Greek concept of kairos, time measured by meaning, as opposed to chronos, the chronological time of schedules and rushing. The ancient Pythagoreans called kairos a fundamental law of the universe, the force that wove together the dualities of existence.
"When you live on kairos time, you move through the world differently: you stop checking and fretting over the literal and metaphorical clock," Joseph explains. "That's where life lives."
