When I was a kid growing up in the seventies, I’d watch my mother pull into our gravel driveway after work and just… sit there.
Engine off, hands still on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at our garage door like it held the secrets of the universe.
From my bedroom window, I’d wonder what she was doing.
Was she on an important call?
Listening to the end of a song on the radio?
Sometimes I’d tap on the window and wave, but she rarely looked up.
Ten minutes would pass, sometimes fifteen, before she’d finally gather her purse and come inside.
I never asked her about it.
Kids don’t really think to ask about the quiet moments their parents steal for themselves, do they?
Fast forward forty years, and here I am, recently retired from my HR job, sitting in my own car in that very same driveway.
My mother’s been gone for five years now, but I finally understand what those stolen minutes were about.
And let me tell you, it’s changed how I see not just her, but this whole business of finding peace in our overstuffed lives.
The weight of transitions
You know what I’ve learned after three decades of helping people navigate workplace challenges?
We’re terrible at transitions.
Absolutely terrible.
We rush from one thing to the next like we’re being chased by wolves.
Work to home. Meeting to meeting. Task to task.
But here’s what nobody talks about: every transition carries invisible weight.
Think about it.
When you leave work, you’re not just leaving a building.
You’re leaving behind unfinished projects, that snippy email from your colleague, the worry about tomorrow’s presentation.
Then you’re supposed to walk through your front door and instantly transform into spouse, parent, or caregiver mode.
No wonder we’re all exhausted.
My mother knew something I’m only now figuring out.
Those ten minutes in the car?
They weren’t wasted time.
They were a bridge between two worlds.
A chance to let the workday settle like dust before bringing it into the house.
I’ve started doing the same thing.
After running errands or coming back from the park with my grandkids, I sit for a moment.
Not scrolling my phone, not making lists. Just sitting.
Linda sometimes knocks on the kitchen window with a puzzled look, the same way I used to watch my mother.
But she gets it now too.
The lost art of doing absolutely nothing
Here’s something wild: when was the last time you did absolutely nothing?
Not meditation with an app guiding you.
Not listening to a podcast. Just… nothing.
If you’re like most people, you probably can’t remember.
We’ve become allergic to stillness.
Every spare second needs to be productive, educational, or at least entertaining.
But what if I told you that those empty moments might be the most important part of your day?
During my HR days, I saw countless employees burn out, not from working too hard, but from never stopping.
They’d eat lunch at their desks, check emails in the bathroom, take calls during their commute.
The human brain isn’t designed for that kind of constant engagement.
Scientists call it “default mode network” – fancy words for what happens when our brains get to wander.
It’s during these quiet moments that we process emotions, solve problems we weren’t even consciously thinking about, and quite literally restore our mental energy.
My mother didn’t know the science, but she knew she needed those minutes.
The car became her decompression chamber, a place where she could just exist without anyone needing anything from her.
Creating your own sacred pause
You don’t need a car in a driveway to find your own version of this sacred pause.
What you need is permission – permission you give yourself to stop producing, stop consuming, stop being “on” for just a few minutes.
Maybe it’s sitting on a park bench after dropping the kids at school.
Maybe it’s arriving at work ten minutes early and staying in your car.
Maybe it’s that moment after everyone’s in bed when you could start the dishes but instead choose to stand on your back porch and listen to the night sounds.
The key is making it intentional.
This isn’t procrastination or avoidance.
It’s maintenance for your mental health, as necessary as sleeping or eating.
When my grandkids visit, they find it hilarious that Grandpa sometimes just sits on the front steps doing nothing.
“What are you doing, Grandpa?” they’ll ask.
“Just thinking,” I tell them.
They usually shrug and run off to find something more interesting.
But maybe, just maybe, they’ll remember it someday when they need their own pause.
Why modern life makes this harder than ever
Let’s be honest about something: finding stillness today is harder than it was in my mother’s time.
She didn’t have a smartphone buzzing with notifications.
Her car radio had five stations, not five hundred podcasts demanding attention.
We’ve created a world where being unreachable, even for ten minutes, feels like a moral failing.
But here’s what thirty years in HR taught me: the people who protected their boundaries, who carved out space for themselves, they were the ones who lasted.
They were also, not coincidentally, the best at their jobs.
There’s this myth that being constantly available makes us indispensable.
It doesn’t. It makes us depleted.
And depleted people make poor decisions, snap at their families, and forget why they’re working so hard in the first place.
My mother worked as a bookkeeper for a local doctor’s office.
Not a high-powered executive position, but stressful in its own way.
Dealing with insurance companies, worried patients, the constant pressure of getting numbers right.
She couldn’t bring that tension into our home.
So she didn’t.
She left it in the car, in those ten minutes of silence.
Closing thoughts
I think about my mother often these days, especially during my own driveway moments.
Sometimes I can almost see her in the rearview mirror, giving me that knowing smile she had.
The one that said she understood things I was still figuring out.
We live in a world that tells us every minute should count for something.
But maybe the minutes that count most are the ones where we stop counting.
Where we give ourselves permission to just be human beings instead of human doings.
So here’s my question for you: where could you find your ten minutes?
Not tomorrow, not next week, but today.
Where could you stop, breathe, and let the noise of the world settle before you move on to the next thing?
Your future self will thank you for it.
Trust me on this one – I’m sitting in my mother’s driveway, finally understanding what she knew all along.
