Most of us want to make a positive difference in the world. We hear about people running races to find a cure for a childhood disease or wearing pink to raise awareness about the devastating effects of breast cancer.

There’s clothing drives, food drives and fund raising efforts being held all over the world to combat hunger and homelessness. Here in our community, organizations raise thousands of dollars to help those in need.

Those efforts are worthwhile and definitely needed.

There is a way, however, we could make the world a little better place, and it only takes two minutes of your time.

It might not seem like you could accomplish a lot in that short amount of time, but consider taking two minutes in the morning and two in the afternoon to genuinely ask another person how things are going.

Most of the time, we give a superficial answer to a superficial question.

“How was your weekend?”

“Fine. How about yours?”

“Fine.”

“Do anything fun?”

“Nah, just worked around the house.”

“Me too. See ya.”

That’s usually how our encounters go – just enough to acknowledge the person, ask the polite question and move on.

Ask any more, and we appear nosy or pushy. Don’t ask that second question and it looks like we don’t care or only asked to have something to say while we’re waiting for the elevator door to open or for that person to get out of the way of the coffee maker.

Truth be told, we often don’t know anything more about that person other than they work where we work.

But if we allowed ourselves to ask a genuine follow-up question, we just might find out something interesting about the people we come into contact with each and every day.

The willingness to personally connect has been waning for the past few years.

The days of dropping in to visit relatives or friends for a cup of coffee and a chat are long gone. We’re either too busy or we don’t want to barge in on people without being invited.

We text friends and family members instead of visiting or calling on the phone. The times we do talk are because we can’t text.

There’s a self-imposed barrier between us and other people, and we make little effort to break down the wall.

Whenever opportunities for conversations come our way, we deflect and run.

I often get exasperated when my phone rings or someone stops by my room to chat. Later I find they had something on their mind they wanted to talk about with another person, but I felt I had to file papers or clear off my desk instead.

So today, even though it was two hours past quitting time and I was working late to get caught up, a colleague stopped by and we chatted for about 20 minutes.

Mostly small talk, but at the end of our conversation, Rachel’s the one who said if we’d just take two minutes to talk to other people, we could perhaps make the world a better place.

She’s right.

Take the two minutes. Forget the filing. Forget catching that elevator. Spend one or two minutes talking with someone you encounter every day but never seem to have the time to stop and listen to them talk, sometimes about nothing, sometimes about what’s important.

Their body language and face will tell you if they’re willing to talk, so pay attention. Sooner or later, they’ll remember you were someone who seemed to genuinely care about what they had to say.

Be that person.

Two minutes.

That’s all it’ll take to make someone’s world a little brighter.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.