It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m about to take a walk around the block. I’ll be back in twenty minutes to start working on my blog.

Fast forward. It’s now early Monday morning, and my usual pattern has persisted. I seldom finish my work unless I have a deadline looming, and my blog is no exception.  I need to finish the first draft by noon on Monday to allow enough time for editing, locating a photo, and posting on Monday afternoon. I intended to finish this blog yesterday after my walk but . . .

I am pleased that I have, in fact, posted a blog every week, without fail, for more than ten years.

But here it is Monday morning, and I have yet to write the blog I intended to write yesterday.  But now the deadline is near, so I will tell you about my walk, in which I appreciated the world around me, writ small.

A few houses down from mine where the road meets a driveway there are two small seeds that are beginning to sprout a few forlorn leaves, a gentle reminder that Spring is under foot (and also under car tires if we don’t drive carefully). The trees are fully leafing out and several bushes have graced us with a fragrant floral display.

Perhaps this will be the year we will actually landscape the gardens in the front and back of our house.  But since there is no set deadline, it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll finally get it done. I assume that Spring will return next year, as it has for many millennia, and the gardens will be there patiently waiting for new landscaping.

But I digress. I intend to write about taking pleasure in noticing all the treasures large and small that can be discovered on a walk. There are many. Yesterday I noticed two large tree trunk stubs more than three feet wide where tall trees used to provide shade, a reminder of how ephemeral and temporary we are, as even the strongest and tallest of trees eventually disappear.

While I love walking in nature, I’m often distressed by the way people thoughtlessly leave their trash for others to clean up. Plastic cups, soda cans and other trash appear afresh every day. Don’t people drinking from plastic cups have mothers who told them to never throw their trash out of the car window?

Perhaps it’s cultural neglect. On my recent three week visit to Japan I only saw one plastic cup on the street the entire time.

Perhaps Robert Frost, who opined the world would end in either fire or ice, should have considered a third alternative. Maybe the world will end up as a single gigantic trash heap.

When I begin either my walk or my blog, I never know where it’s going to lead. I do know, however, that there is so much to be discovered, and there are many surprise treats along the way.

You just have to notice them.

Alan

Our lives are measured in minutes. The minutes that matter, and then all the other minutes. I call the minutes that matter, the “Cash In” minutes.

The “Cash In” minutes are those in which something wonderful happens: your special friend says, “Yes;” your report card is your best one ever; you’ve been hired for your dream job!

How do we maximize our “Cash In” minutes? I’ll answer that with a classic joke.

A man carrying a violin case was rushing through Times Square.  A stranger stopped him and asked, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

The violinist shook his head, and said, “Practice, practice, practice.”

I am the son of a man whose profession was playing the French Horn in orchestras that created the soundtrack for major motion pictures. I believe he played in the orchestra that recorded the soundtrack for “The Sound of Music,” and also for “Around the World in Eighty Days.” I imagine both of those experiences were filled with “Cash-In” minutes.

But dad practiced on his French Horn for two or three hours daily.  Musicians at that time, were only permitted by the Musician’s Union to work a maximum of ten hours a week. So there were a lot more practice hours than “Cash-In” hours for my dad.

But isn’t that the way the world works?   Every day we’re mostly preparing for the “Big Show.”  (To a baseball player that would be the World Series, to a poet, winning the Pulitzer, and to an entrepreneur, a successful company launch.) While “Cash-In” moments might be different for each of us, we all have to put in enough practice time to give ourselves the best chance at achieving those moments.

Today I’m writing my blog. Tomorrow you’ll be reading it.

Cash In moments for us both.

Thanks.

Alan

Shortly after we arrived in Tokyo for a three-week vacation, I needed to be seen by a doctor in the central hospital because there was a little blood in my urine.

The Japanese doctor seemed quite competent, but when he threaded a catheter as part of the exam – suffice it to say I felt quite uncomfortable for a minute or two.

As a way to distract myself… I began to hum.

I didn’t hum just anything. I hummed a song I had first heard in 1953, the year that the movie LILI was first released in U. S. theaters. (click here to see a clip of Leslie Caron as a. 16-year-old waif, singing the song.)

The lyrics aren’t as important, but obviously the catchy tune was memorable enough that I have carried it along with me for more than seventy years.

And what a great distraction it was. As I hummed the tune, over and over, I was thinking more about what the doctor was thinking about my humming than I was about what he was doing to me. Isn’t it amazing how humming a little tune can make a frightening situation better.

For the rest of our cruise around Japan the high points for me were both the friendly Japanese people and our day in Busan, South Korea.

We’re back now, but my favorite moment during the entire three weeks was – as usual – walking into my bedroom at home after we returned.

I’ll be seeing a local medical specialist to follow up. Perhaps I’ll hum a happy tune through the exam… Hi Lili, Hi Lili, Hi Lo.

Alan