I’m not sure when adults become aware of the fleetingness of time. Children have a different sense of it. Another year, especially on the day after Christmas, is unimaginable.
There will be no freshly delivered carloads of toys the day after tomorrow, but an infinite time spent in the holiday waiting room. The next thrill will stand still, arms folded and immovable.
As to yesterday’s new toy, my six-year-old grandson said, “I’m already used to it.” He told me this a week after he received a birthday gift I called to his attention. Smart fellow.
Middle-aged adults sense that they are on a fast-moving train, even if their arrival at the destination is uncertain. By our 50s, summoning joy is not as easy as buying more Legos or a superhero bobblehead. That doesn’t mean we have stopped searching for pleasure, but it does show that a child’s spontaneous delight is tough to recreate. Life has become a more serious business and the poop jokes don’t make an impression anymore.
Unless you are with a kiddie you happen to love.
I have found joy in books, movies, concerts, comedy, and theater, but your favored sources of happiness might differ. I talk to those I care about far and near with pleasure. But the kids are on to something in the element of surprise.
Mary Oliver’s poem “Don’t Hesitate” underlines the point. She describes the messiness of our lives, our sometimes absent wisdom and kindness, and our fear that the best years are past us, and that new joys will be as slippery as a soap bar in a shower.
Ah, but there is love, especially when it is unexpected. The poet wants to remind us not to give up, not to look back with regret, but to live in the present, to notice things and possibilities, and recognize the fullness possible in those possibilities.
“Joy is not meant to be a crumb.”
Don’t hesitate, Oliver tells us. Take chances. Give in. Fearlessly.
As Oliver asked elsewhere, “Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Don’t Hesitate
by Mary Oliver
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
==========
The painting reproduction is Joyousness by Paul Gauguin, 1892, sourced from Wikart.org/
Below it is a restored photograph by Zoltan Kluger and Adam Cuerden. It shows a Bukharan dance performed by members of the Rina Nikova ballet in the citadel of Jerusalem.
