Joy Takes Extra Time and Effort - Is It Worth It?

Today is my birthday. Yes, I get to turn 65 on - get this! - National Senior Citizens Day! I didn't know that such a date existed, let alone that I share my birthday with it. But I do.

In planning how to make the coming year the most joyful year ever, I've been especially eager to use my new half-price senior-citizen bus tickets, valid for the first time TODAY.

With these I can ride Boulder's dizzying array of local buses all over the city for a paltry $1.40 for three hours worth of rides. With the regional discount tickets, I can ride the bus all the way to Denver! The Denver Botanic Gardens, the Denver Art Museum, many favorite bookstores, can all be mine for $2.50 each way! Plus, with a regional bus ticket I can ride the bus for half an hour, and three thousand feet of elevation gain, to the mountain town of Nederland to ride the Carousel of Happiness!

Nothing brings me more joy than writing in Other Place and, even better, getting there on the bus (so light! so free! so blissfully unencumbered!) With these little books of discount bus tickets, I can take myself on weekly writing dates all over the greater Denver Metropolitan Area.Visions of bus-transported writing happiness are dancing in my head.

But here's the downside of this plan.

It takes time.

It takes effort.

I could get to all of these places much more quickly and easily by car. It will take several different buses to get to some of these sugar-plummy locations. I might spend an hour - or more - on buses to go the same place I could reach in a half-hour car ride.

As far as that goes, I can write perfectly well right in my own house, where abundant amenities are on offer: adorable teapots that can be filled with tea and covered with adorable tea cozies; fragrant candles to be burned; Pepperidge Farm apple turnovers that can be popped into the oven.

In fact, tea in a mere mug is lovely, and lit candles are unncessary, and I can enjoy a perfectly satisfactory toasted English muffin without heating up my whole entire oven. Indeed, I don't even have to put jam on it from my membership in the Jam-of-the-Month Club given me as a Christmas present by my sister last year.

So: why should I go to all this fuss and bother? Is all this time and effort really worth it, for a few little added jolts of joy in an already quite joyous life?

My answer, as I turn 65, is: YES. I'm not talking about having an extravagantly joyous writing outing every single day of the year. I'm planning this as a once-a-week treat - a once-a-week treat that will THRILL me and make me hug myself with remembered and anticipated happiness for the week's other six days.

I think there is a real danger, as we age  - heck, as we muddle through all the stages of our lives - to cut corners on joy because it's more efficient and convenient - easier all around - to get used to doing without it. It's a slippery slope: I'll start by deciding the bus is too much trouble - and then that even driving myself to a writing date is too much trouble - and the next thing I know I'll be talking myself out of spreading jam on an English muffin and settle instead for plain dry toast.

I'm here to warn my future self against the temptation of choosing ease over joy.

"Don't do it!" I'm calling to her across the years that stretch before us both.

Spread that jam!

Ride that bus!

Heck, buy that plane ticket and take yourself on a writing date to PARIS! (Watch this spot for details to come . . . )

After all, if joy - JOY - isn't worth a little extra bit of time and trouble, what, on this Earth, is?