An Interesting Challenge for you for today.
For a child: Sit with her or him for 15 minutes a day and allow that child to direct your play. Or direct the conversation. Time it. Give them the power for a whole fifteen minutes. No television. No music. No interruptions. No phone. Fifteen minutes of uninterrupted play – one on one. (Try it then get back to me. )
For the adults and grown children in your life: Tell them something positive about themselves for 30 seconds. Thirty WHOLE seconds. Time it. (Do it before you comment). They do NOT have to reciprocate. Over the phone or over coffee. It will work the same. But it must be your voice – your beautiful voice. 
The people we love are worth that.
No phones. No television. No computers. No music. Just you and me. Play with them. Fifteen minutes and Thirty seconds.
I am saying this because we are slowly evolving as a society into millisecond bites of information and comment. Where has the love gone.
We are worth that. Try it before you comment here. Then tell me what you think. Take the time.
What do you think?
Love celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
66 responses to “15 minutes and 30 seconds”
What a great exchange here! I stopped in the middle of reading and called my daughter. Told her I just was wondering how she was doing. She opened up and told me more of her plans. I gave her positivity, saying that I knew she was under a lot of stress and that I thought she was doing very well with it, and she opened further. I’m going to be doing this more often as usually when I call I’m asking for a ride to thus and so. This is going to make a difference!!!
On another facet of this subject, I was talking to a cousin (Dad’s first cousin) and telling her about my kids. She responded saying that gratitude in children is like mouse milk. You know there’s some, but it’s not much and whenever you get some you should appreciate it. I’ve never forgotten. Mouse milk…who’da thunk? Love, Gayle
A few weeks ago, we started a Family Fun Time. Every evening after dinner, baths, chores, we end the night by playing card games the kids choose. Even my teenage son cannot resist the lure of games. We get to see them in a whole new light, and it’s refreshing for the kids to have a time when they aren’t being directed to take care of responsibilities. We laugh together. It’s wonderful!
Just spent an Hour and Thirty minutes on the phone with my daughter – and we both wished it was longer as we always have so much to say! But her four kids were getting antsy about her not being available to them LOL.
Oh the stories I’m sure we could all tell about people …people we know and love, not strangers….. and their phones. You’re right, Celi, it does make you feel invisible and unimportant. I’ve travelled all the way from Oz to Ohio to visit my daughter, only to find she spends more time on the phone and texting than being with me, even her kids telling her to get off the phone and be with me/us doesn’t make any difference, or even giving her positives…..” I enjoy being with you so much when we talk/walk/share without your phone between us” , but she just says thanks and agrees and then goes back to her phone anyway, so I don’t go anymore….and have told her why. I talk to strangers and often comment positively about them, especially the young mums who cope with tantrums from their littlies in the shops, and always tell them how well they handled a difficult time, and am always telling my friends the wonderful things I love about them, but until recently didn’t really have it happen to me, but now I have a new friend I met dog walking, and she’s great at giving out these impromptu positives….I recently told her about my planned day, and as I was heading up the coast, a drive of a couple of hours, I planned to combine a number of errands so I only had one trip…..she immediately said she was always impressed how I creatively use my time to accomplish a lot…..such a little thing, but I really felt “seen” . Great conversation everybody, thanks all for sharing
I read aloud to my children every night until the youngest was seventeen… we had such fun, laughing and crying together.
A few weeks ago I wrote to my grandson who I don’t often see how he’s so busy with his studies. I told him all that he had meant to me ever since he was born.
He wrote back with the most exquisite thing he’d written last year when he woke in the middle of the night, about what it was like staying with his grannie… to have it spontaneously back and two-way was a miracle !!!
I really enjoyed this thoughtful post and comments. Makes me appreciate what I have, and vow not to lose. No kids, but a wonderful G.O. who even if we’re watching TV, looking at a computer screen, book or magazine talk and interact; interrupting and sharing. A life and appreciation hard won though… But it also is a reminder for me to be in the moment and take my time when chatting to family and to look outside my own bubble to say hello, pay a compliment or chat to people I don’t know well or yet 🙂
My spouse and I usually eat together at least three or four evenings a week, no phone, no computer, no television, no radio, just us and the dog, frequently on the screened porch in the nice weather, or the kitchen otherwise. The kids all know to turn off their phones if they come to visit, they have all been told, unless it’s important, there is no need to be texting someone else if theyr’e visiting here.
It’s wonderful having everyone here in the Fellowship. You all are loved and appreciated. It lifts my day reading Celi’s post and all the comments. The unconditional positive regard shared amongst everyone makes this a place of calm, acceptance and friendship. Isn’t it amazing what can happen when people will just be kind to each other?
Somehow this post slipped under the wire. I’m so glad I searched back and found it – so much wisdom, love and good sense from you, Celie, and from the entire Fellowship. This is what keeps me cheerful through pain and problems. I love you all!
love,
ViV
Celie, perhaps get another milking cow – or two – could extend the “together time” no end. A few areas around us are mobile black spots and some people are not sorry about that. Rick and I only have ancient mobile phones and only switch them on when we are driving on our own. Fortunately our youngest daughter appreciates our feelings and the phone is switched off during meals. However, both daughters have smart phones for work so we have to appreciate their need to be heard – the phones and the girls. It is a 21st Century problem unfortunately. Joy
While I value my ability to converse via email and blog chat immensely, I know too that face-to-face commitment is essential—even for an introvert like me with spasmodic dysphonia! So I have had many 4-5 hour lunches with friends, when we decompress and deconstruct the world as much as we can. Two such lunches, this week, it turns out. I often do it for younger friends who seem a little at sea or lonesome, but always, always, find that I am comforted and renewed at least as much as they are by the experience.
This week it’s been one of combining the two forms of communication intensely, too, as another dear friend had a family tragedy and we’re both trying to find the time this coming week to sit down for such a lunch and comfort each other, and trying to put into words via email how we’re feeling and what we need in the meantime. As much as digital communication can put distance between us, I find that in times of need like this it has tremendous power to close the gap: a quick text to say “I’ve heard the news. I’m here when you’re ready to talk,” an email to say “when there’s time, let’s sit down and cry together,” and then the ability to go back and forth quickly to find a day and time when the latter can really happen. All part of the survival of grief and finding our way toward equilibrium again.
What a beautiful post, and obviously one that touched us all, C.
Love you.
Kath
Spent 15 minutes with The Boyfriend this morning over a cup of coffee before work. It’s so important to pause in life and appreciate the right now, and how wonderful life is, regardless of what is happening in it.
I wish you a wonderful day.
Your blog is the one I often turn to for inspiration on how to write well.
GG x
Reblogged this on Dana L. Daggett and commented:
This caught my attention and I finally decided that you might enjoy reading it, too.
I don’t normally do this sort of this but today I’m reblogging a post from another site. Yes, reblogging is a real thing. I read Celi’s blog daily and enjoy her insight and the tales of life on her farm. This post from 9/26 stuck with me so I decided to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
D
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