Living in-between heartbeats

Some time ago, I’ve seen a Bentley ad posing on an interesting question: “How much can you live between heartbeats?” Leaving aside the impactful tagline, offering, in my view, the most exclusive sense of belonging for someone spending more than $200.000 for a car, the ad left me as well with something else to think about.

Are our heartbeats more than just rhythmic and mechanical confirmations of a healthy body? What if, instead, there is an entire universe worth exploring that’s hidden in between two beats? Is it worth explaining our evolution through such microscopic cycles of life? Would we appreciate such a new dimension and its impact on our life?

Living between heartbeats will drag us in a spiral of micro split-second decisions and allow absolutely no time for rationalization. Fully emotional decisions! A world led by the heart rather than the mind!

For all of us, emotions are one of, if not the most important part of our personal life decisions. However, we feel urged to separate them from our “educated” actions. For example, we justify our professional actions in a rational-mindset-based-framework as we tent to feel secured by its educated predictability.

Nonetheless, throughout the years we face situations when we are not able to dissociate our heart from mind. It is then when we might feel captive to the first and try to rationalize post-scriptum it’s based outcomes for getting an acceptable sense of objectiveness. Sometime we even deny heart’s presence in our choices as we might feel it as a sign of weakness in the eyes of the others.

I believe that is time for us to accept that the “birth moment” of many choices in our life, no matter how rationally-based we might consider them to be, is still the consequence of heart’s interpretation regarding the achievement of a perfect mix between choices’ moment in time and their outcomes’ internal/external reach.

If we accept that a great number of our actions are influenced by choices of heart, it means that we can define the life as a continuum of successive and interconnected assumed options marked by our heartbeats. This is why I believe that the intensity of our living in-between heartbeats will impact as well our further sense of life fulfillment.

In a simplified logical approach, in order to understand how much we will be willing to “live” in-between heartbeats, we will have to find out in the first place how much this tiny segment is worth to us. Should we seen it as a predefined and guaranteed one’s life “commodity”? Or instead, as a cyclical unique “gate” for redesigning our future? Can we put a financial value to it? As high the resulted value as big our probable involvement in maximizing its passing presence in our life continuum.

At 78 heart strokes per minute, heartbeats are compressing in-between themselves 0.75 of a second. In 2013, a Swiss watchmaker launched one of the most accurate chronographs able to master the tiniest fractions of time. We can assume that the advertised $170.000 price was related mainly to its particular 5/10000–of-a-second accuracy.

If this holds true, one might consider that an entire second will worth $340 million ($170.000 x 2000). Consequently the time in-between heartbeats (0.75 of a second) can be appreciated somewhere in the range of $255 million. Does this new valuation suddenly become sufficient to convince us to buy a $200.000 car or what? 🙂

However, I believe that this exercise is not actually capturing the accurate value of what can be brought into our life by a maximum enjoyment of our in-between heartbeats’ universe. In my view, the true meaning of each time frame starting with a heartbeat comes from the relevance it brings to the following one! It is about the immateriality of the profound emotions brought out to surface that lead to actions. It is about the consequences that our interpretation of an intense “living-in-present” will further bring.

It is the intense sense of refreshment brought by inhaling the sharp air breeze in spring while watching the blossoming tree in front of you, the one that will define your positive tackling of the rest of the day/week.

It’s the unique moment of feeling in the seventh heaven when first told that you are loved, the one that will mark your further enjoyment of spending a life time with your dear one.

It is the instant amazing happiness when having in your arms for the first time your child, the one that will determine the level of your further commitment to be a good parent.

It is the intense present moment of joy when praised by others, the one that will impact your future actions. It is the instantaneously sense of admiration seen in the eyes of those you respect, the one that will determine your further dedication in any matter bringing more from their recognition.

Having all these in mind, I will try to maximize the outcomes of fully enjoying my in-between heartbeats existence. Deciding on profoundly grasping the messages brought to my attention by the “small things” to help me change for better. I have in front of me 118 days before year end. 169.920 minutes and approximately 14 million heartbeats. Maybe not as many choices/opportunities but enough material to play with. In the end of the day, the time that rests in front of me worth as much as I will make from it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VCtRN2mH9s. 🙂