PORCH PONDERINGS

Enjoy Life

PROMPT May 13th

What does it mean to be a “grown up”? What do you do regularly as an adult that you dreaded having to do when you were a child? Have you found ways to maintain a sense of childhood wonder or curiosity? If so, how?


I am always curious. I am always trying to ways of making life interesting. I feel that life is too short to be boring. That’s my way of dealing with getting older.

So, you can get older and more mature. But you don’t need to ‘grow up’. You need to keep that sense of wonder and amazement at things in the world.

A good example was today when I volunteered at the thrift store. We found a nice jacket for one of the fellow volunteers. A denim jacket with lots of nice rhinestones and shiny buttons. Really nice and fun. She agreed and put it aside to buy later. Well, I found the perfect t-shirt to go under it. I know you’ve seen these. They have a silhouette of a bikini on a curvy body printed on them. So I told her, ‘Here, you need this to go under that jacket.’ We had a hoot and holler about that. Only because she is of a certain age and body type. And we are all friends that can laugh about silly sight gags. Then we found an undergarment. Holy cow. And it would fit a cow, I swear. Size 44 DD. In a bright floral print bordered in bright orange and blue. Again, hoots and hollers about that. The manager later, as we marched upstairs to pay for our treasures, asked us what we were laughing about down in the basement. Well, how do you explain? Just having fun. Loving life. Enjoying each other’s company and being silly.

My point is, make every day a fun day somehow. At the senior center today we had sweet and sour chicken and rice. No big deal. But - we also had fortune cookies. Now that was the big deal. Because you always read the fortune and then add the words ‘in bed’. Our table got a few stares from the rest of the diners as we laughed until we cried.

There is a Bible verse: Proverbs 17:22 - A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Be sad when you must, be serious when you must, and be merry the rest of the time. Life is too short. Enjoy it.