Five minutes
I only had five minutes between the moment I left my house and a lunch meeting with a friend in town. I waffled, because I knew it wasn't much time, but I decided to use those minutes to call one of my best friends, a friend I have had for more than 20 years.
She didn’t pick up, so I left a voice mail; she called back a minute later. With only a couple of minutes to spare, I figured I could let her know that I was thinking about her and say hello. After the initial happy surprise to speak with each other, the tone in her words changed quickly, and I tuned in.
“I’m so glad you called me today,” she said. “I needed a friend. My mother recently found out that she has breast cancer and her lumpectomy is today.”
This was a shock to me as well, and I have spent plenty of quality time with her mother, whom I adore, over the years. We went on to discuss her mom’s prognosis and promised to text each other that day for updates. Her mom had the surgery and a shot of radiation, and her prognosis is good.
[Side note: women, go schedule your mammogram! Yes, right now. I’ll wait.]
Those five minutes were well spent. I wished I had an hour to talk to her and catch up, but I didn’t have an hour. And in all reality, she probably didn’t, either. In most cases, a few minutes at a time are all you need to feed and nurture your friendship.
You know how it goes, right?
You move, or have a baby, or start a new job, or get married, and your time is squeezed into smaller and smaller segments and you find it difficult to keep up the level of friendship that you could before life marched forward. Long conversations are replaced by quick cups of coffee and voice mail tag. Guilt sets in and before you know it, it has been three months since you last spoke to each other.
Who called last? Is she upset with me for not calling her back?
My friend Andy and her best friend implemented something they call “the 5-minute rule”. If one is thinking of the other but only has five minutes to spare, she will call and say, “I only have five minutes to talk” and they talk as much as they can fit into that period of time. It’s part sanity check, part loving gesture, and part friendship maintenance. It's all about setting up the expectation up front.
Often, I feel as though I need to allot more time to a “meaningful” call. So I wait, and wait, and wait for the perfect moment.
The perfect moment is elusive between getting ready for school and making dinner and working and Little League practice. And that’s only on my end. A friend might have tae kwon do, swim, and occupational therapy for her three kids. Or maybe she just has three kids and that pretty much takes all the available time slots, especially when they’re small. Or maybe she’s a busy executive. None of us have the time we had when we were teenagers, twirling the cord around our fingers as we chatted away.
Five minutes. Try it. The next time you’re thinking about a friend and you just want to hear her voice, call her right then and there. Or wait until you’re on your way to pick up the kids from school, even if it’s just down the street and you don’t have much time. You can speak a multitude of feelings in five minutes.
You’re saying:
I care.
I’m thinking about you.
I want you to know that I’m glad you’re in my life.
I trust you and need your advice.
I need for you to hear me because I feel lost.
I love you.
And honestly, not everyone is a phone talker. Some of my friends prefer email or text, and once I learn their preferred method of communication – their phone love language, so to speak – then I can keep in touch with them at their pace. If it’s a text, I can dash off a quick, “Hey, I’m here, and I miss you.” If it’s an email, I can sum up my week with a few paragraphs and start a volley. My mother has a friend two states away she writes to every single day – not long missives, but short notes to keep the fires of their friendship going.
It might mean more than you think it does. Five minutes is worth a lot.
Do you have five minutes? Go.
Love,
Kristin