Ten Minutes Of Silence

I enjoy the process of meditation and sitting in silence for at least 30 minutes every day. The benefits of meditation are apparent, and as an eager parent, I want my kids to take up this practice. Unfortunately, they are young, full of energy, and have their own mind. Much as I encourage them to embrace this practice, they are very reluctant. They feel that they have lots of work to catch up on, and committing 10 to 20 minutes to sit in silence feels like a waste of time.

“I don’t have time. You know how much work has been piled up. I am having to sit till 2 am every day studying. When I have some free time, I feel like relaxing” is the refrain I get. Relaxing in their context is catching up with Instagram and surfing the net.

How difficult is it to spare ten to twenty minutes in a day? In the continuum of time that flows from the time we wake up to the time we sleep, intuitively, we all know that there are enough free spaces. But, our mind struggles to grapple with how and where our time goes.

Just as an exercise, I have looked through my daily schedule to see how my day goes. Instead of looking at numbers in a table, I decided to put my day into a Pie Chart. This is how it comes out.

Now, If all of you were to plot your own pie charts for how you spend your 24 hours every day, how would it look? I suspect your pie chart will look no different from mine.

But here is my proposition. If your pie chart of how you spend your day is similar, how difficult is it to find 10 to 20 minutes in the 24 hours to sit in silence and solitude, giving your senses some rest, consciously?

Can you create space, perhaps under the category of random stuff, for ten to twenty minutes of silence – meditation, contemplation, prayer, or simply being with yourself- without haste, without disturbance?