It took one minute and 40.91seconds for David Rudisha of Kenya to capture the Olympic gold medal and set a new world record in the 800 m in London 2012. Chairman of the London organizing committee Sebastian Coe remarked, "Rudisha's run will go down in history as one of the greatest Olympic victories. I feel privileged to have witnessed it in London." The two minutes Rudisha spent running in the Olympic final was the culmination of the weeks, months and years of training that were done in preparation but it was the two minutes on the public stage that Olympic fans will remember.
Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most famous speeches ever given by an American president in the form of the Gettysburg Address in 1863.The nation-changing speech was less than 300 words and delivered in just over two minutes. The time spent presenting the speech could happen only after hours and hours were spent writing, honing and crafting the words to share at such a pivotal point in history.
A two-minute commercial break goes pretty quickly if you are trying to grab a snack or get a task done before your favourite TV show resumes. Two minutes in an asthma attack stretches out endlessly if someone is waiting for their medication to help them breathe again. Two minutesa stepping stone to glorya revolutionary vision...a blink of the eyeendlessit all depends on the situation.
The idea of observing two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day was first suggested by journalist Edward George Honey and embraced by King George V who issued a proclamation that: "at the hour when the Armistice comes into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be for the brief space of two minutes a complete suspension of all our normal activities. All locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead."
As we attend services on November 11 we will be asked to observe two minutes of silence. Two minutes of quiet to rememberto reflectto recognize the fallen. It is such a small measure of time; the time it takes to make coffee, or feed the pets, or find a snack. Two minute intervals can go by in a heartbeat unnoticed, unremarkable, and unexamined. But these two minutes on this one day each year should be, by intent...different.
In the course of a typical day an average adult spends 67 minutes eating, 101 minutes driving, 119 minutes on a smartphone, 97 minutes with a significant other, 166 minutes watching TV and 19 minutes reading. We do a lot of different things with our time. But on November 11 we will be asked to do something not in keeping with how our culture currently operates. We will be encouraged to be still, to stand in silence to convey what there are no words for.
The two minutes don't come close to the hours, days, weeks, months and years soldiers spent crouched in fox holes, positioned on the front lines, shivering in the cold, missing their loved ones, caring for the injured, and burying the dead. I don't understand the pain, the sacrifice, the fear or the courage it took but I can pay tribute to it now.
Two minutes of my time to reflect on the lives of the thousands whose names I do not know and whose stories I have never heard. Two minutes to quietly demonstrate what volumes of histories and reels of archive have attempted to convey.
What can be accomplished in two minutes? Anything from sweeping up Cheerios to setting world records. Two minutes observed in silence may put all the other minutes in perspective as we recognize that because of what those soldiers did, we get to decide what we do with all those other minutes. That's my outlook.
