Life these days seems to be all about the “instant”. Instant chats, instant food, instant results, instant this or instant that. Everything is expected to happen within seconds in the latest. If it doesn’t, than the verdict is out – the service is not good, the employee is not efficient, the friend is ignoring me, the worst has happened etc., etc., etc.

Are those justified conclusions? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not, it would depend on a case to case basis.

But what I do know and can confirm experientially is that in my work with clients, many times the process needs to be slowed down in order for the client to reap the greatest benefits. True, it can be done faster, but that’s not always the best option.

This leads me to believe that it’s not a question of speed but of something else. Maybe the better question to ask would be ‘where should the focus be’?

Should something happen fast or should it happen in a way that is the most beneficial.

By the way, speed and quality are not mutually exclusive, they can very well coexist together, so that is not the point.

The point, I suppose, is not in the “instant” but in the “present”. Meaning, are we present when we live our lives and things happen? Or, are we often taken by the flow and we live our lives habitually, automatically, without conscious attention on every ‘instant’ while expecting everything to happen fast?

Maybe that is all we need to do. To add the “Present” to the “Instant”. So when something happens we can be Present in every Instant. I am sure life would be so much more fun in this way.

At the end of the day (pun intended), would you want to hurry through your life as fast as you can, or would you like to be Present and savour every Instant of it?