It took me a minute….. to deal with, process, grow, etc. I love this phrase, but to some people it sounds dumb; referring to a larger, quantitative, span of time as a minute. Understandably, it probably took a lot longer than 60 seconds.
A minute of time is different than a minute in time.
Has anyone ever said “I’ll be there in a minute.” and actually arrived 60 seconds later? How hard it must be for children to grasp the concept of a minute, when their experience of Mommy coming in “just one” takes a whole lot longer than a few seconds.
In the big picture, in REAL TIME, all life’s moments last just a minute.
When we look back on our lives, flashes of years take but nanoseconds. Entire crises are forgotten, not worthy of the final edit. Profound realizations act only as a soundtrack, highlighting the moments that truly matter; using feelings rather than sound to denote their significance.
Your life can change in just a minute, and almost always does.
With this new perspective, I can think of no unit of time more appropriate to measure a moment in life. Hours and days speak of waiting and impatience. Years, easily forgotten, become impossible to measure, despite their consistent number of days.
It took me a minute, but I’m here.
Header picture by Elaine Kelly