Crystal moment or Rubber moment?

I was never appreciative about the yellow post-it notes pasted all over the study room by my wife! It looked yucky to me. “Such a waste of time” – I comment loudly looking at them, especially seeing her “bucket lists”.  At times she takes a futile attempt to convince me saying all these really work as it gets recorded in your subconscious mind and through the magic of law of attraction (referring to the great video “The Secret”).

Last weekend I accidently found a new post-it note scribbled with only two phrases – “crystal moment and rubber moment”. I was very curious to know and I couldn’t keep myself from asking her what does that mean. She told that she had a training on some technical skills and during the training the trainer just mentioned about it – that was the only take-home for her from that meeting.  

Any moment in our life can be accepted in either of the two ways – a crystal moment or a rubber moment.  “You can bounce back from missing a rubber moment, like a soccer game”, she said. “But the clear implication is that missing a crystal moment—a graduation or the birth of a child—will create lasting damage”. What a wonderful concept! When there is a conflict of two events, how many times we ask ourselves which one is a rubber moment and which one a crystal moment?

Researching on this idea, I found many hits in google. Time Magazine has published an online piece about work-life balance for CEO dads. In it, Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit, describes what he calls “rubber” and “crystal” moments (read).

Smith says, “The rubber moments are routine – your son’s 37^th basketball game of the season or your daughter’s 15th dance competition. Events you’d like to see, but can’t always make. But you know there is another one coming up. So if you miss one, you can promise to make another. But then there are those crystal moments – those once-in-a-lifetime events that make for precious memories. The first homecoming dance. Your sister’s wedding. The must-do things that you’ll remember forever and should never miss”.

Smith’s metaphor mirrors the glass ball story that Rebecca Ryan talks about in her first book (read). For Rebecca, work is the rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other big moments in life are glass. Drop them and they break. It’s a lesson Rebecca says she learned from her father’s hospice nurse.

I do remember this now when I need to make a choice between my office laptop and my three-year old son’s offer to play with him for ten minutes!

Today I glued my first post-it note on my bedroom wall and I felt good... J