(Note: no edits were made to this blog)
When I was in class today, I decided to not do anything for 10 minutes. Nothing. During the 10 minutes, I discovered many small details that I would have overlooked if I was doing something else.
In the beginning, I thought about my life in the past 18 years. What have I done well? What have I done not so well? The movement in my body signals that I am not very good at keeping completely still, that I always look to do something. Eventually, I calmed down and stopped moving as much. Afterwards, I started to think about the assignments I still have in the rest of the year. A quick look at what is going to happen in the future. Human minds really enjoy visualizing the different timelines and the possibilities within. I thought about the things I have to or want to accomplish and whether they are worth it.
After the reflection, I begin to observe my looming assignment due in 55 minutes. The characters appeared in front of my screen. To be honest, I am still really surprised on all the work I have put in into this assignment: paragraphs of texts regarding a book called Parachutes and its intersectional identities. I think back to the book from the memorable story line to the characters within. These high school assignments, they will be gone in around two months. Well I don’t think I have cherished them well enough.
I then observed more details within the computer I am typing this essay. The dust that sits within the keyboard, and the difficulty of removing the dust. Should I use a alcohol wipe or a vacuum cleaner? What will be the logistics of that? I also looked closer at the speakers near the latches of the computer and the cooling vent on the right. It is impressive how small these devices are nowadays.
Afterwards the sounds, the classroom I was sitting in was particularly quiet. In fact, I was surprised how quiet it was given that there were 30+ students in the class. Almost all but 2 students were working on their own English assignments. I wonder how they view this English assignment. The occasional typing and leg changing positions adds to the silence. I thought about my decision to sit close to the teacher due to a research I read about that students get higher grades if they sit close to the teacher. This might be useful later.
When I tried to meditate, the construction noises came. I thought about the Wikipedia article I edited for my school once in a stretch of 7 hours, 5x ing the content. Well I am back to the English assignment and it seems like 6 minutes has gone even though I planned for 10. It feels really nice to just slow down time like that because that really felt like 10 minutes.
After the “10 minutes”, I thought about what I wanted to do with it. In the past, there are a lot of times where I just have ideas and never write them down. But today, for some reason, I really wanted to write this because it is an interesting topic, that is why this article exist. If you read to the end, congrats! You should try this out sometimes. It is a form of meditation in my opinion that feels really nice afterwards. You will be surprised just how much happens in that 10 minutes. Sit somewhere, and just, do nothing. Good luck!