Our culture fears getting older. But there is a different way to think about the passing of time

‘We often unconsciously keep chronos time …. but I’ve begun to think of kairos time and, in my world, that can mean the intuitive flow of writing poetry or the intuition that guides how I care for my child in small, everyday moments.’ Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP

The compost-grown cherry tomatoes, sitting in a basket on my windowsill, are ripening: little bubbles of brightness in this deep winter fog. As I type, at 7.30am, there is a wide brushstroke of fuchsia glowing over the highest peak to the east; otherwise my surroundings are soaked in cornflower-blue mist.

I’m thinking of time. What time do you have? Are you reading this on your phone on a train, on the commute to work? On the sofa at home, enjoying a cuppa? By time, what I’m really thinking about is the texture of time. Here in countries touched by the English language and colonial imperialism, time is a commodity. Here we often unconsciously keep chronos time, where the echo of “chronological” will sound familiar.