In a New York Minute

It's the end of the year, and looking back, I'm sure many of us are thinking how frivolously we used our time.  Of course, there were things that were well-worth the time--the day of my wedding for instance.  Yet, what of all those times I zoomed about the internet looking for the perfect veil?  

I turned in a paper today, for instance, on which I spent a good couple of months--time well worth it.  What about all the time I checked my email, the news, the weather, Facebook, and more when I should have been working on my paper--time used less wisely.

Today, on the day so many are looking back and thinking of time and what they did with it, my friend reminded me how time really is of the essence.  "A minute is so much better than 15 seconds," she said to me on the phone.  On the surface, nothing exceptional.  Sure, a minute is better than 15 seconds in many cases--more time to sleep, more time to get ready in the morning.  Nadav often says to me when we're getting ready to leave the house, "I'll be ready in two minutes."  Two minutes is no time, right?

Taking into account, though, the circumstances under which she made this comment made me realized just how much time a minute can be: it's enough time to move your family from the living room to the protected room--the one with concrete, re-inforced walls.  It's enough time to run down the stairs, if need be, to your apartment building's shelter.  It's enough time to pick up your child and run for dear life, for his life.

She lives in Beer Sheva and works in Sderot.  A few days ago, we could have said, "She lives in a place where the rockets can't reach and works in a place where for the last 7 years, over 8,000 Kassam rockets have fallen."  Now, we must say, "She now lives in a place where the rockets can reach her and her family and several hundred thousand other people."  There are warning sirens, to be sure.  In Sderot, they give you 15 seconds, if you are lucky and the siren sounds.  In Beer Sheva, you have a minute.   "A minute is so much better than 15 seconds."

I think of the millions of people who will watch the ball drop in Times Square this evening and of the countdown as the ball moves down towards ringing in the new year.  Wouldn't it be amazing if everyone counting down suddenly understood that some people in the world have even less time than that to try to save themselves and their families?