Mindful Minutes: Why Are They So Difficult?

Noise and commotion is all we know and are surrounded with as students and faculty at the Derryfield School. The new addition to this year's assembly is the minute of silence: the 60 seconds every Monday morning where all is quiet and we are to reflect and just listen to the stillness. But, is it quiet? Are students comfortable with the quiet that we lack during our day? This is what some students and teachers had to say.

When asked about the coughing fits that always seem to occur during this silent minute, Ms. Llewelyn said, “The first time I think it was a lot of people were sick, but then I think it got exaggerated. But generally, I think moments of silence are really tough all the time. I think it is a great idea, but I think it is hard to implement.”

Think about it: besides being in a test, what other time do we have without talking or the dings of computers and phones? Never.

“Moments of silence are different for different people and reflection is easier for some people than it is for others,” Ms. Llewelyn said. “I think mindful minutes are great for a community that is always busy. But it says a lot about our community when a faculty member says to another ‘I just have to tell you this one thing real quick’. I think we have work to respect it more.”

Here is a wonderful example of how students and teachers really may not be all that different from each other. We are all anxious and feel the need to just spontaneously say something to someone in the one minute of quiet time we have in a school day. It is the hope of the community meeting organizers that we will soon not feel the need to spit out what we are feeling during that one quiet time.

Junior Camryn Quinlan agreed with Ms. Llewelyn. “The day is so busy that most people just think it’s almost a waste of time. We are just adding this moment of blank space. It just seems kind of wasteful.”

Derryfield students never have time to relax and just listen to silence. In such a tough school that puts so much pressure on students, we often feel uncomfortable when we do not have anything to do: we just aren’t used to it. Maybe once we continue this moment of silence throughout the whole year will it become a more comfortable minute for both students and faculty.

There seems to be consensus that as the “always-doing something” students and faculty at Derryfield, 60 seconds to listen to absolutely nothing and to sit still, is downright difficult. While good intentions may have gone into this, it is quite difficult for a community to completely change its ways. For this moment of silence to work, we must work harder and somehow make that minute meaningful to everyone. As Robin Sharma once said, “Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.”