Lately I’ve been tak­ing after­noon walks to free my mind of cre­ative restraint or to just breath in the fresh air. It’s a change that I’ve wel­comed, even if my legs don’t always thank me for it.

Instead of just tak­ing in the sights around me I’m also begin­ning to lis­ten more, pay­ing close atten­tion to the sounds of nature and the par­tial con­ver­sa­tions I pick up on while on my walk.

Since we live in a vil­lage (with a pop­u­la­tion of less than 5,000), small talk car­ries itself through the walls of homes, in meet­ing hot spots like the park or the local super­mar­ket and you’re always bound to run into some­one you know.

It’s a lot like Cheers, where every­one knows your name or at least your fam­ily name.

On my most recent stroll through the vil­lage I noticed a fel­low stand­ing on the street cor­ner in front of a Mom & Pop diner. He looked about in his 50s, but with all of his hair still intact and I kid you not, his attire con­sisted of a tank top, shorts and dress shoes. He was yelling to a friend across the street, who non­cha­lantly con­tin­ued on his way until he noticed his loud companion.

They both laughed, one teas­ing the other and I moved on. You might see this kind of thing in every­day life, to you it might even be mun­dane or commonplace.

For some­one like me who has ten­dency to extrap­o­late the small stuff, which works to my ben­e­fit and some­times just the oppo­site, these kinds of occur­rences are impor­tant for a few reasons.

One, that life really is like a play and there are pat­terns that we all rec­og­nize and become used to. There’s no spe­cial for­mula to obser­va­tion, you either pay atten­tion to details or you don’t. I’ve been informed by peo­ple that small occur­rences in life like two guys meet­ing on the street aren’t worth remem­ber­ing or men­tally archiving.

Yet, life is an expe­ri­ence. It’s more than just a few months strung into years, it’s moments and mem­o­ries and every­thing else.

When some­one lets you know that their child stood up for the very first time, you might be inter­ested for a moment and then together your reac­tions don’t align. For the par­ent of the child, this is mon­u­men­tal, a mile­stone in the growth and devel­op­ment of their child.

To you, even if you might be related, that same feel­ing the par­ent had isn’t what you are feel­ing because it may not be as impor­tant. We’ve got to keep track of a lot of infor­ma­tion, this may not deserve a folder in the stor­age of our minds.

I might be a spe­cial case because I can selec­tively recall things/thoughts/occurrences that hap­pened years ago. Most of these moments in time would’ve been long for­got­ten by most, but I hang onto things that might have made a dif­fer­ence to me.

Even if that means not hav­ing the same emo­tional attach­ment as the per­son who deliv­ered the mes­sage or the guy yelling at his friend across the street, it’s some­thing I cherish.

The only down­side is my short-term mem­ory leaves some­thing to be desired. Recall­ing mem­o­ries from years ago is no prob­lem (in some cases), but there are times when I remind myself of some­thing and moments later the mem­ory or reminder only par­tially remains. 

At first it seemed some­what unreal, that the per­son I was speak­ing to on the phone was pos­si­bly a robot or one of those “Madame Mer­coni” fortune-telling car­ni­val machines come to life. You know the ones with spooky glow­ing eyes, a rigid Char­lie McCarthy puppet-like jaw and palm fac­ing up eager for your quar­ter and an open-mind.

The voice on the other end of the line quickly went from semi-unintelligible to socks-in-the-mouth syn­drome and then silence. Silence? Did I say some­thing? Offend some­one pos­si­bly? No, prob­a­bly not. It wasn’t one of those kind of con­ver­sa­tions, where two peo­ple man­age to agi­tate one another in 15 words or less. Fol­low­ing the silence, the per­son, a woman, maybe in her mid-30s, I wasn’t sure, chimed back in. She finally spoke, “Yes? Hmm? What you want?”.

I slid the menu across my desk, quickly scanned some food choices and then responded that I wanted a combo. “What combo? Yes? What? Hmm?”, she said once again in a rushed, there-isn’t-enough-time left today atti­tude. Right then I had an impul­sive desire to ask her some of the ques­tions I had on my mind through­out the week.

Ques­tions like if there really is a mean­ing to life (and I’m sure that answer could be quite lengthy) I’ve often won­dered if there’s a con­densed answer in the form of a tabbed, color-coded Cliff Notes guide? Or, would I ever be able to sched­ule a meet­ing with the Dalai Lama in my life­time and had if were blessed with such an oppor­tu­nity, what would be the first thing I’d say?

Even­tu­ally I snapped out of that men­tal state and told her that I’d have the orange chicken today, with an extra for­tune cookie because if any­thing I was con­vinced that lit­tle slip of paper might be able to answer at least one of my questions.