I had the pleasure of hearing Damien Patton speak this week. Damien is the founder and CEO of Banjo, a tech company whose technology allows businesses to know precisely what's happening anywhere in the world right now. Like this femtosecond now.
He spoke about live time vs real time. I certainly can’t explain it as eloquently as he did, but what I took from it was that these nanoseconds are what is really happening, not the minutes old photos or “live streams” we see on posted on social media.
For example right now, in this picosecond my left thumb is in mid-air above the space bar as I’m typing this ramble. I can predict your “right now” will be hours from now, as you're reading it. Was I right? Did you plan a little quiet moment to read it? Or are you in the elevator in-between meetings?
Live time is what is truly happening, Real time is … Blah Blah Blah, I know, I know, what’s the point?
Well it reminded me of the importance of the real life time and more importantly it reminded me of the welcome note I wrote to our wedding guests.
So, I dug into the depths of my hard-drive to find it.
“Life is Hard...relationships are harder.
Meeting while working a half a country apart. Starting a friendship separated by multiple states. Courting while divided by miles of freeways & sometimes more than one ocean. Our love grew despite our careers being managed by government agencies who seemed like, at a whim, changed their minds.
We rarely had any guarantee as to when we would see each other. The few times we did, we never knew how long we could spend, or what continent it would be on.
We found our OCD-level planning preference didn't make a damn bit of difference; most of the time the greatest plans never worked out. Then, an epiphany!
What really mattered was right here, this moment. To experience it, took attention, patience & lots & lots of effort.
We realized what mattered were the moments we felt together - no matter how long or short they were or how far apart we were. The 6+ hour phone calls, the sunsets on the west coast of Ireland before flying home just in time for our birthdays, the brief chat from the top of the Black Forest to tell him about the snow only to hike back through it alone, the 36 hour trip “home” to only spend 8 hours at home & the rest on a road-trip to an awards dinner, THE awards dinner, the weekly dinners before kissing goodbye at the airport & the fantastic canceled flights when we got just a few more moments.
Those exact moments, that we were completely present in, those moments mattered...matter.
We want our guests to have that epiphany too. Not to worry about the plan. Instead be in the moment & to love all that it is.
Welcome to this moment.”
Real Time, Live Time or Real Life Time? I choose Real Life and this moment every Time. ~Stepheni Dickinson Farm