The 5 Minute Project

All they did was put aside 5 minutes of their time to print something and add it to the binder. Those consistent 5 minutes a day created something beautiful that I can hold onto forever.

Perhaps if we all took 5 minutes a day to put something in a binder, it would help us on our darkest days — it would encourage, inspire, and remind us that life truly is beautiful.

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I’m about one week out before I get to travel for the first time — on another Rohingya Reunion. I get the privilege of reuniting with my friend who is officially a grandmother. I will be meeting her first grandchild. In honor of my beloved friend, I wanted to share a short story about my grandparents:

“Sophie, I want to show you something. Wait right here.” My grandmother rushes to the back room just as I was on my way out the door. I have no idea what she is about to show me, but maybe it had something to do with my constant pessimism towards my work and questionable career choices. Typical things you’d say as a quarter-life-crisis-suffering 24-year-old.

She comes back clutching a white binder to her chest. The binder is huge — completely full of paper. Whatever was in that binder has a lot of information. She turns the binder around so I can see the front cover. To my surprise, it’s a picture of me. One of the photos taken while I was traveling.

I look at her in surprise. “What is this?”

“Open it.”

I open it. There is a print out of my very first blog that I wrote when I moved to Thailand. I turn the page to find my second blog. Then I find my third, fourth, and fifth blog. Every single blog I’ve written (even the ones I deleted later on) was printed out here. But not just my blog posts. There were newspaper clippings of when my story was featured in local newspapers. There were printed annual reports of Books Unbound. There were printed photos of my travels through Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, and beyond. There were even emails printed out from when I wrote them while traveling. I read through the conversations I had with them — talking about my adventures in Nepal and Bangladesh, showing them pictures of Rohingya children receiving Books Unbound’s materials.

But that wasn’t all. My grandmother brought out another binder. This one was full of photos and emails that we sent them when we lived in South Africa. Updates about swim team, emailing them my report card, sharing about the new puppy we just bought. They printed it all.

All they did was put aside 5 minutes of their time to print something and add it to the binder. Those consistent 5 minutes a day created something beautiful that I can hold onto forever.

Through a series of events, I’ve been living with my grandparents for the past 6 weeks. This has truly been a gift. Coming back as an adult to the house that has fostered so many childhood memories has given me a whole new perspective. I’ll spend hours digging through old photos, scrapbooks, and memories of my incredible grandparents.

They’re going through a tough time these days. It hasn’t been easy — in fact there really is no easy way to deal with it all. But as I go through this binder of emails, messages, and photos, I can see that my grandparents have been my biggest cheerleaders throughout my life.

They’ve supported me through everything. My accomplishments, my failures, my angsty “I have no idea what I’m doing with my life” mentality. If there is any way to support them through this difficult time, I’ll try. We’ve had some difficult conversations about life, death, and what truly matters in life. From it all, this is what I’ve learned: life is beautiful. It really is.

Perhaps if we all took 5 minutes a day to put something in a binder, it would help us on our darkest days — it would encourage, inspire, and remind us that life truly is beautiful.