Fifteen Minutes
By LuAn Mitchell-Halter
Personal Development Magazine

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing. –Bill Cosby

Let’s take a time out and read with untainted eyes between the lines of a story I received from a complete stranger I sat beside on an airplane. It’s a powerful messaged entitled “Fifteen Minutes”, and was shared with me by a dear man named Ron Tippe, whom I like to call My Sunshine. He shared a gift that hit me like a bolt of lightening.

A remarkable and very creative Hollywood producer, this stranger and I say side-by-side but never said a word to each other the entire flight. We just smiled politely periodically and nodded (you know the routine), until the plane approached our destination and the pilot announced, “We will be landing in fifteen minutes.” Then we glanced and really smiled at each other, (like, “Oh yeah. Finally I can get out of here.”)

After the pilot’s announcement I suddenly felt a jolt of guilt, like I had probably appeared snobby. I decided to make an effort to connect. I asked my neighbor timidly, “Do you live here?” Just to be polite; you know, “life cover up stuff.”

To my surprise, once I decided to make an effort to connect, the proverbial “flood gate” to my mind and heart began to open. What a gift awaited me in this stranger’s wisdom and sharing. Writers on a mission to help others by sharing stories of awakenings, like me, are always looking for new material, and this guy was amazing!

We talked about fifteen minutes, which in one’s life might mean zippity-do-dah…but not this time. After sharing his thoughts during the fifteen minutes we had together, I asked him if he would email them to me. I was so energized by the conversation.

Truth be told, I was not supposed to be on that flight at all, but on my stuffy business trip for still another week. But because I felt yucky (tummy issues), and as inconvenient as it was, I decided to listen to my inner voice and physical condition and change flights.

The experience taught me to give thanks for things I used to grumble about, even tummy aches. Now I give thanks for that yucky feeling; it was just what the doctor ordered to get my on an earlier flight, next to Ron and his wisdom. I’m grateful that something inside of me said, “There just may be something you do not know, YET.”

Truthfully, those last fifteen minutes were magical. Ron was fascinating, and in our conversation he spoke of members in his inner circle who were suffering with health challenges I knew a little something about, having journeyed through some of them with members of my own inner circle. It was amazing, and such good energy to share some of my wisdom on this topic back with him! I gave him a gift for a friend of his as well. It made me proud to be able to pass it on with my love and hopes for a healing. Was this meeting of worlds just by chance? Serendipity?

The next morning, as I started checking my emails, my new air travel friend was there in an email just as promised. We began to call each other by our seat numbers – he was 1D and I was 1C; it was fun. He inspired me to my depths with one simple email that day, and made me think of things I had honestly never thought about before. I couldn’t wait to share it, embrace it, tell people everywhere about it. I want to feel it, digest it, even, leap tall buildings in this cement jungle with it! I asked him for permission to do so, and he said yes. So now it is “our email.”

The email is entitled “15 Minutes”. In many ways, I feel it actually came to us – you and I. Read on; I think you will soon get what I mean. Give a lot of thought to this series of ideas. They have the power to “fly you there,” and take you to new heights! My hope is that you will be inspired to be a superstar super duper new friend to someone today, and everyday yourself!

15 Minutes
Fifteen minutes. 900 seconds. 1,080 heartbeats.

It may have been right when Andy Warhol said that everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame. But I got to thinking, what if you don’t seek the fame? What if you’re not famous? What’s really inside those fifteen minutes? You can walk uphill to strengthen your heart. You can fall in love to strengthen your soul. You can pray to God to strengthen your spirit. You can talk to your kids about life, death, and the existential nature of both. You can write a song, give a speech, walk the dog, see an old friend, make a new friend, make a dinner date, laugh until you cry, cry until you laugh. Fifteen minutes. 900 seconds. 1,080 heartbeats.

Nine hundred seconds seems like such a long time as one sits and thinks about ones’ life. 1… 2… 3…counted slowly and with a slight pause, it could last an eternity; it could go by in a flash. 900 seconds of making music, making trouble, making love. 1… 2… 3…and so the count goes. Fast, slow, the beauty of choice. “I often wonder,” said the old man to his grandchild, “if I had it to do over again, would I make the same choices? Would I still love the same way I did? Would I still feel what I feel now?” So real, so honest, so pure, the love of a child, the love of a friend, the mystery of a stranger. 1… 2… 3…

Fifteen minutes. 900 seconds. 1,080 heartbeats of confusion, excitement, curiosity. 1,080 heartbeats of human contact. 1,080 heartbeats of human connection; that which makes it all worthwhile. And so, the fifteen minutes of fame passes ever so quickly and the 900 seconds, ever so slowly. But the 1,080 heartbeats, I wouldn’t trade it for fifteen minutes of fame. Funny how short both life and fame can be. Wonderful how long both life and love can be. Fifteen minutes. 900 seconds. 1,080 heartbeats. 1… 2… 3… “Please put your seats in an upright position, we’re about to land…”

Was this just another email? A “one person” perspective story? Or was it an enlightened message, an “angel-to-angel,” sensational awakening in code for wild and wonderful realizations?

For the next several days it never left my mind. I thought about how I was spending my moments and what was important to me. And I became more aware of my “heartbeats” and fifteen-minute intervals of life. I was so sensitized; I could feel my internal timer ticking. For the first time, I really thought about my two life journeys – the inside and the outside – very differently.

I decided I wanted to be open in my life – not closed up like at the beginning of the flight – but open to receive new ideas, new friends, new moments, and ultimately, a new day.

I looked at my own life: did I chase after the proverbial, “fifteen minutes of fame?” Gosh no. I desired to just go with the flow. Like Ron had suggested in his brilliant email – which I still read today and have pinned up in my office with a picture of us together taken at a lunch – I wanted to get to the “heart” of the matter.

The man I called My Sunshine (because he helped me to grow), had challenged me to look at my own objectives in every moment differently. Now I could fall in love, I could walk the dog, I could make music, or make trouble, or I could choose to make a positive difference in someone else’s life. “Ah ha,” I said. “I could write a story about this experience and share it with others…”