PERSONAL ESSAY | NATURE

Ten Minutes Transformed My Day

And can transform yours

Something unexpected happened on “one of those days”. I was in a funk in the morning, upset at myself for how I’d acted the day before: not loving a new and unusual client, and later, after a nervous appointment where an audiologist fitted my new, high tech, high-priced hearing aids, locking myself out of the car.

It didn’t help that I’d yelled at the State Farm Roadside Service representative, who’d informed me after I’d been waiting in the wind, that the tow truck had left and the next one would come in 51 minutes. Midst asking the representative, in an upset voice, how this could have happened, the call had disconnected.

I would have respected myself more had I handled things perfectly, with loving regard (wistful smile) for each person I’d encountered.

And I wrote from this cloud-shorn state in an inter-faith writing group that met the next morning. As usual, we read an inspiring poem and wrote in response to it. This time the poem was super cheerful, from a soul who had it all together — forgiveness of enemies, courage in difficulties, flexibility in love… etc.

I thought, wrote, and read to the group, in response to the poet, “Shut up. Aren’t you on your spiritual high horse?!” My frustrations from the day before that hadn’t been stirred in the pot of self-compassion and learning poured out on this poet. Yet I also revealed in my writing, “I might have written such a poem at a time I felt spiritual and connected.”

It turned out I was not the only one that wasn’t feeling so high, as I learned from hearing several others’ writing pieces. Bombings in Ukraine seemed to have set a sulking air on personal shadow and little life bombs.

It so happened that one of the members who I’ll call Pearl, suggested to another of the writers who was similarly feeling low and had shimmied under the limbo stick quite beautifully expressing her unsatisfied feelings in poetry, to take 10 minutes to do something she wanted to do to unwind, be creative, feel better.

Pearl’s words somehow came back to me when the writing group’s Zoom gathering ended. Though I have 16 things plus on my To-Do List and number one will take many steps, I thought, standing in my little studio: What if I could take ten minutes? And again: What if I could take ten minutes?

I convinced myself to do it and drove to this area by the Gabrielino streams north of Los Angeles that on a miniature level resembles Yosemite with huge rocks and small ones. So I walked on a slender path up and down, around little rocks.

There I was basically in a mountain walking seeing such tiny purple flowers with light line striations (not sure that is a word) and big green leaves, and wild bushes with yellow tiny clusters that you could only see fully looking close up, and so tall trees crowning it all. I felt like a pioneer on this trek.

This was my first time wearing my hearing aids. I walked down a little path with my tennis shoes edging to the side slowly so as not to fall (even though it wasn’t steep), ending up close to the stream. I could hear birds more loudly and probably the stream, while a tad unnaturally, more loudly too.

In one place water ran over a small boulder in a quieter stream song, in another, it was louder — though I couldn’t see where the sound was always coming from. I heard strange animal sounds I couldn’t distinguish and — perhaps children’s sounds?

As I walked I came upon a little group of wee children with several adults in the background. The little ones with the fresh plumpish cheeks were perhaps three years old. I said to the children, “I thought you were birds! I heard the sounds…” One wee child offered me a blade of grass — thicker on one end. I thanked her for it.

Another also offered me a blade of grass. A little boy offered me a little brown cluster pod from a tree. All the time I was thanking them. A tiny girl offered me a stone. She said something I couldn’t understand. Another of the children explained that she speaks Japanese. Later the Japanese girl said a sentence in English, gave me a bigger stone.

“You are so generous!” I told the children several times. This was so unexpectedly touching for me. More stones and nature treasures were offered to me.

The adult came closer. “Where did you find all of these wonderful children?” I asked her. She said this was a type of school. “Like homeschooling?” I asked. She said, “Something like that.”

At one point I would ask a child if she or he wanted the pod or the stone back and every time they did, but then several of them came up with something else to give me. The Japanese girl gave me a bigger stone. A small boy gave me another pod in exchange.

So all that stemmed from Pearl mentioning to take 10 minutes to do something that ultimately opens your heart. As you can imagine it was quite a healing moment transforming the funk I had felt in the earlier morning! May it be so for you, in spades, when you open a door to a more beautiful, relaxed world in ten minutes.

My suggestions: As Pearl suggested to me, if you go into nature bring back a rock to remind you to return to nature. You can write “Ten Minutes” and post it on your fridge or in your phone calendar. Ten minutes can be used for any activity that’s absolutely not on your To-Do list; it is rather on your Un-do list.

What can you do in ten minutes? Your really short mini-vacation, for example, could be a doorway to looking at stars, listening to birds, stirring a hand-made soup, coloring, dancing in dress-up clothes, reading jokes — doing something new that feels like an adventure, makes your heart hum and feel, without words, that life is good. And, if you’re lucky, someone may let you spend time with their three-year-old — even for an amazing few minutes.