One More Minute…

Anyone a member of the 1MM Club?

No, not the 1 Million Mile Club. The 1 More Minute Club.

You know — that time-share world that is almost always self-serving, self-indulgent, and often futile. The club where you think, “one more minute…”

I suppose if you are watching the morning weather and stay one more minute to make sure you heard right, and you miss the deer crossing the road at 6:46 a.m. that you would have hit had you not stayed one more minute…, then that’s okay.

I’m talking about those every day happenings you think will matter more if you extend them one more minute.

I am a big one in this Club.

In the shower, forehead pressed against the far shower stall wall, hot water soaking my tired body: staying in the water for one more minute…

Laying in my morning bed, still dark outside, alarm goes off, time to get ready for work: staying in bed for one more minute…

Watching the weather channel in the morning, staying to check the weather for the third time just in case I missed something: watching it just one more minute…

Writing: I’m almost done with this chapter. I’ll just write for one more minute…

Reading: Whether or not I’m really “into” the book, there are just a few more paragraphs until the chapter is over: Let me read for one more minute…

Kids use this excuse all the time. We think nothing of letting them have one more minute of bath time or play time or before-bed time. What’s one minute in the scheme of things? Yet these same parents, these same people, justify their own few minutes by pretending to end it in one more minute…

I know that personal time is in a different dimension from the one we live in. We never have enough time to do the things we love, and way too much time to do the things we don’t. That’s the cosmic way. Kids are never aware of the clock. In their natural state they do things until they’re done doing them. They are done when they are satisfied.

Adults, on the other hands, are mostly slaves of the clock. We have to be. Doctor appointments and trains and time clocks don’t wait.  They know if they give one minute here it will accumulate to hours there.

Who do we think we’re fooling? If we think the situation will be any better one more minute from now, we are usually wrong. For most of us one minute blends into the next into the next. We have lost track of so many one more minute’s that we could fill the space between the stars.

In defense of the members of this Club, though, I have to admit…when I “allow” myself one more minute of whatever, I concentrate and fill that minute with all the enjoyment and cosmicness I possibly can. That hot shower is like fingers massaging my back; that paragraph that I’m writing is the best I’ve ever written. It is so because I crammed hours of enjoyment into a very small amount of time.  And most of the time, it’s worth it.

Just like the minute it took you to read this.