Real time is the art of making meaning where life unfolds.
I have a certain Russian on my mind these days, but who doesn’t...
I’m referring to Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy of War and Peace fame, who wrote about the human condition where I find myself jostling between “the two most powerful warriors… patience and time.”
Last week while we were rolling our clocks forward, 37 million people in China were put on lockdown due to rising COVID cases. Some of these people are the very workers manufacturing eu2be’s reimagined product packaging.
It’s no fun for them for sure. And for us, the move signals further delays in our relaunch, which almost seems inconceivable to me.
How can we, as a small, scrappy indie brand with meaning on our mind, demonstrate the power of small to the world and expect to have an impact?
Surely our new packaging won’t be in place in time for next month’s opening of the Venice Biennale, where we are a lead sponsor of the ICA Boston’s presentation of the acclaimed artist Simone Leigh’s work at the US Pavilion.
For some, China’s lockdown is just another current event. For me, it makes the saying “time is money” very personal. It deepens my awareness that when it comes to birth, or rebirth in our case, gestation cannot be rushed.
eu2be is not a big company. We can’t just up and move production. We must endure and stay the course.
So you see, I don’t have the privilege of traveling through time as if there is nothing to see here. My vision must stay sharp and focused, or otherwise the weariness of it all becomes too overwhelming.
THEY SAY WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW
Well, I write about strategies of endurance, tools of resilience and ways to make meaning through small acts because I’m very much in touch with how fragile we are as individual people and as small businesses.
The mindset and practices that eu2be products are designed to advocate spring from my own lived experience of vulnerability and my heartfelt intention to live a life of meaning and purpose.
Speaking of vulnerability, it’s excruciating to watch a nation and its people come face to face with the real possibility of the clock running down on their country’s very existence. Let’s raise our hearts for peace in Ukraine and all places of war.
Einstein called time “a stubbornly persistent illusion,” and when I’m patient, I can also see that time miraculously knows exactly how to compose itself on us, creating memorable moments that ultimately make the measure of our lives.
Our bodies know this about time, which is why they’re so good at bringing us into a different rhythm with time and returning us to the natural world where all things flow in harmony.
“When you see time not as a product of the calendar but as the mother of presence, then you will find that in the world of spirit, time behaves differently.”
— Poet-Philosopher John O’Donohue
Artists, poets, musicians, yogis, meditators—anyone who has endeavored to inhabit the empty, dynamic space of time—knows what I’m talking about. It’s the experience of beauty speaking to us across time and space.
The beautiful thing about coming into this natural time—real time—is that we all get a turn at it,
to make something good of it
to waste it beautifully
to spend it wisely
or simply yield our precious attention to it.
As you go about your days, engaging in your own struggles of patience and time, may you find yourself safely in a place where life unfolds—in real time.
