Have you ever realized how long one minute can be? If you’re not thinking about it, it is gone before you know it. But in one minute there are enough seconds for you to be gripped in fear, panic, a bullet piercing through your flesh, agonizing pain, knowing death is coming and what is that thought? That last thought that goes through your mind. The romantic in me thinks that my last thought would be of my love, the one dearest to me, the person that is everything to me in one body. The pragmatist in me thinks that my instinct for survival would be saying...help me...don’t let me die. We all want to survive on some level. The spiritual side of me thinks that I would be talking to the angels around me and hanging on their every word for comfort and strength. Isn’t it interesting that if you are waiting for an important phone call or the arrival of a guest that a minute seems so long and yet when you are watching a TV program 30 minutes is over before you know it? Have you ever noticed how the world views a minute? There’s the 10 minute workout, the 2 minute meditation, the last minute gift, and 'got a minute?' when they really want way more than that. There’s up to the minute headlines, someone couldn’t make it until 'the last minute' now it’s not really the LAST minute. I’m reasonably sure there will be more minutes ahead. Then there’s 5 cents a minute long distance which puts a monetary value on a minute and 8 minute Abs, who really looks like that in just 8 minutes? There’s minute by minute meetings, a 15 minute intermission and how do you actually 'take a minute'? Have you ever noticed how long one minute of silence seems? Are we so accustomed to sound that one minute without it makes us feel uneasy? When you are alone at home and the electricity goes off and you find yourself in total silence devoid of the hums and whirs of clocks and appliances and all you can hear is the sound of your own breathing you realize how bombarded you are with noise on an almost constant level. Each minute that passes gets uncomfortably longer. But personally I like minutes. It’s the first level of time that you can actually feel if you allow yourself. It’s the first level of time that you can intellectually divide into subcategories because it’s just full of those measly little seconds...60 of them to be exact. And there is my all time least favorite saying, especially when it is directed at me...'There’s a sucker born every minute.' Even Shakespeare had something to say about minutes in Henry VI and with his words I will end this essay...