It’s something my brother, Jonathan, said to me. I was deep into a video project that a client was ruining by suggesting horrible changes—stripping the heart and soul from the piece. It was a situation Jonathan, a more accomplished editor than me, had suffered through himself many times. He said I was letting the client get to me. I was allowing myself to fall in love with my supposedly perfect work on, of all things, a corporate video.
“You’ve got to find five seconds.”
“Huh?”
“Look, how long is the video?”
“Around two minutes.”
“You’ve got to forget about the two minutes, and find five seconds of that show that you love. And when the client comes in next week and wants to change the five seconds you love, because that will happen, find a new five seconds.”
“How am I supposed—”
“Otherwise you’ll go crazy.”
(Totally-invented-but-maybe-close-to-real conversation between Jonathan and David Beedle from back in the early 2000s. Or was it the 1990s?)
Often times the most beautiful, wonderful moments in life are achingly short: a rising corner of a mouth that’s about to become a smile, an unexpected chord change, the turn of a phrase, a stipple of paint, a knowing glance. They last for only a second … or two … or five.
If I am not allowing those moments to inform the rest of my time—time that often passes in the most mundane of ways—I’m making a big mistake.
So I do my best to to Find Five Seconds. Sometimes they are completely obvious. Other times I need to search for them. And often they are unexpected—coming out of nowhere; catching me off guard. Five seconds that can stretch for days. Or years. Or lifetimes.
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