With age comes diminishments of all kinds. There is the addition of glasses, hearing aids, and walkers. There is no longer the ability to ski or run a marathon or take long walks or swim laps. But there is one thing that should not dimmish in our lives--- and that is joy and laughter.
This came home to me the other day when I was out shopping. I passed a lady sitting on a bench, her walker resting in front of her. She was smiling from ear to ear. In front of her was a two-year-old with fly away hair dressed in a pink tutu dancing away to the music that filled the mall. The toddler’s joy in the moment was reflected in the older lady on the bench who, in spite of her walker, was enjoying the moment along with the delighted little girl.
I am finding more and more that any gathering of people over a certain age becomes a cataloguing of what is wrong in the world from car repairs to young people, to doctors, to merchandize in stores, to life in general. What happened to joy? There are still plenty of things out there in which to find joy, most of them in the small moments forming the kaleidoscope of the world about us: a child carrying a helium balloon out of a store with a look of pleasure on his face, a young girl twirling around in colored tennis shoes in the shoe store, a young man opening a door for someone, a checkout girl with long, twinkling nails, or a service mechanic who takes time to explain what is really wrong with your car.
Whatever our diminishments may be --- and they are ever present in our lives--- we must remember to take the time to appreciate the joy around us and maybe the glasses, walkers, and hearing aids will be the things that diminish.
