We're Too Old to Use The Age-Old Excuse to Avoid Joy
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Changing our language changes our experience
I’m too busy. I have work to do.
Mika was lying next to me this morning, luxuriating in her daily massage. We both had had a long walk on the beach yesterday. She sprinted, I walked. It was pure joy, even if my poor feet were speaking to me in Icelandic the rest of the day.
The sun was bright, the waves sparkling, Mika came when called. Progress.
Pure joy.
Today, before I got out of bed and brushed off the blizzard of Mika hair, I thought about the day ahead.
I have a load of work to do today. I’m too busy.
Wait a minute.
I’m a wordsmith. Wrote the book on the power of words.
I have a lot of joy to experience today.
Just like that, how I felt about the day ahead, including what work I might do, was transformed.
With just a few words I redirected my attention: to my gorgeous yard, to the soft weather, to the happy dog on my bed, to the privilege of being alive to experience these things and so much more.
Sure, there’s work to be done.
But there’s also so much joy to be had.
Many of you may have heard some version of this story:
An old woman waited quietly for a cab, her luggage packed. The cabbie picked her up and they head towards her destination. Along the way she asked him to drive by this school, that church, this library, that store. He slowed down as she took it all in.
Along the way she told him about her life.
This is where I went to school. Where later I taught school.
I got married here.
My husband is buried there.
That was our favorite restaurant.
She was reliving her long life.
Finally they arrived at a pleasant building, an elder community, where the cabbie helped her with her luggage. At the reception area, a nurse guided the woman to her room.
“Do you want to tour the area?” the nurse asked.
“I already know it’s going to be wonderful,” the old woman said.
Surprised, the nurse looked at the old woman as she stood at the entrance to her room, looking around with bright, if aged, eyes, smiling.
“But how do you know that?” the nurse asked.
“Because I’ve already decided it’s going to be wonderful,” the old woman smiled.
I’ve already decided it’s going to be wonderful.
I have a lot of joy to experience today.
So do you.
I can’t speak for anyone else. Our situations, our stresses are all as different as our fingerprints. I have worries, the mystery spot on my lung, articles with deadlines, feet that hurt, a house to sell, plans to make for a decidedly uncertain future.
Those things can shoulder out all the available joy, joy that is around me all the time: the friends I love, the dog I cuddle, the rose bush I just discovered in my yard whose blooms grace my dining room table.
News can cost us joy. Fear costs us joy. Dread costs us joy. Our endless to-do list which renews itself like spring bunny rabbits costs us joy.
The joy that is available to us doesn’t dissipate. We simply choose not to see it.
Sure, I have work to do. Lots of it. Boxes to pack, plans to make, articles to research. I have a house full of Mika hair to vacuum, laundry to fold.
I’ve used the excuse of work - in the forever search of the hero button that nobody will ever give me - to sidestep joy.
I’m too busy.
For what? To experience joy?
The human do-ing part of me has always pushed away the joy that living as a human be-ing offered.
I’ll get around to it. Later. After I do this…thing.
Or I can choose it right now.
Two people in their fifties, people close to me, got cancer. One just died at 51. The other is 58, and has a very rough road ahead. Survival rates are low. Even then, she may only gain five years, much of which will be spent in chemo, surgery and the like.
That’s rough.
When will I choose to see the joy that is always and forever available, before the door to my life closes?
How about today? Right now?
Despite the news, despite the doom and gloom, despite….all of it, let’s choose to find the joy that is everywhere.
That’s a superpower.
Let’s play.
With heartfelt thanks to all the Substack writers who post gorgeous photos, fabulous quotes, share their joyous moments and help all of us push back the ugly news. Joy is contagious. Let’s infect more folks, shall we?
Thanks to all my readers and subscribers for the inspiration to do better.
Finding joy is so easy to do and yet so hard to do. It's so easy to get distracted by all the distractions. It's so easy to look past the things that give us joy because we are focused on that damned To-Do list. Thanks for the reminder that all we need to do is look around. The joy is everywhere.
You reminded me of a friend I haven't chatted with in a while. I sent the email inviting him to coffee! Thanks!