Can I Have a Minute of Your Time?

Can I Have A Moment of Your Time?

John Paul Derryberry

I always try to end every talk by thanking the crowd for taking a moment to talk about mental and emotional health. No one has to come to my discussions. They had many other options and chose to work on emotional and mental health. We often forget the nicest statement we can make to others: Can I have a moment of your time? First, it conveys the importance of time, the one resource we can never add to. It's a polite statement signaling I respect what it means if you grant me a moment. Second, it's reassuring, implying I won't waste your time. And let's be honest, on our deathbeds, we always lament about the time we wasted. Lastly, it shows I need your permission to take time away from you. It's not ours for the taking but a gift you give us.

Out of all the things I see in society that we screw up, it's the lack of respect we give moments in time. The notion that other people's time is ours and somehow is owed to us is false. The idea is we will get more time with people, even though there isn't a guarantee anywhere that we will get more time with them. We will likely get more time with people, but it's not 100% certain we will. It's the people who figure out how to respect this process, who figure out how to build fulfilling relationships. We must take advantage of the moments people give us. There are so few of them, especially in today's too-fast-paced world.

We all know the power of moments. When we focus on the moment at hand, we can connect more deeply, heal trauma, achieve more, and so many other things that make life feel, well, feel alive. Some of the moments I cherish are:

The moment I admitted to my sister that suicide was an option.
The moment my mom, even though I was a moron, told me she was proud of me.
The moment at a New Year's Eve concert in Nashville where I knew Anne was the gal for me.
The moment I stepped out on a college basketball court for the first time.

The moment I got my comeuppance and learned I would have to work unfathomably hard to have a career in the mental and emotional health field.
The moment my friend and I played whiffle ball on a makeshift field in our college house backyard.
The moment my girls made me dad.
The moment I said goodbye to my dad.

Our lives are full of these, stuff we remember and moments we have forgotten. Yet they shape us. These moments created our happiness when we gave them to the right people. And there are moments that caused great anger when we gave them to the wrong people. So maybe that is what life is: a series of moments when we actually tune in, and then we drift until we tune in again. And the people who find a better life have learned to tune in more often and drift a whole lot less. They have figured out how to tune into the correct people who will value their time and moments.

The types of thing I'm trying to accomplish in life has me asking many people for a moment of their time-- either while working in the field of emotional and mental health or giving presentations. There is not a day that goes by that I do not ask someone to gift me a moment of their time. I never want to lose the respect of how powerful a gesture it is that they grant me that time. I never want to take it for granted. I know I have, and if you gave me your time and I didn't use it wisely, I apologize. It wasn't my best moment. We all have those imperfect moments, too.

The best we can do is move on to the next moment. Life moves fast; we are only really here for a moment anyways. In the grand scheme of billions of years of existence, we will be a blink. But, if we do it correctly, it will be a beautiful blink. So make sure we respect the moments people grant us and respect ourselves with the moments we give to others. If we do that enough times, we will have so many moments to look back upon fondly. And that's the key to all of us: not the moments we give ourselves, but the moments we give to others. So from me to you: Thank you for your moment this Sunday night; it means the world to me!