Roads to Joy

There’s a special sort of joy in watching your children, and then, if you’re really lucky, theirs, grow up into cleverer clogs than what you yourself are. I don’t know if you’d call it a sort of wry acquiescence to your inevitable destiny, or what, but for me it’s both sweet and kind of bitter. There should be a word for that! Oh.

It’s swings and roundabouts though, this game of life. Sometimes experience is better than ingenuity, sometimes it’s the other way around. Experience can get in the way too. How many times have I heard around this patch: ‘Well, we’ve tried that idea already, and this is the way we do it.’ And the new idea gets slung into the round file and the person who suggested it slinks away, wishing a nice hole might open up before them so they could disappear. And yet, and yet I believe folks around here are actually more receptive to new concepts than those in lots of other places.

So life goes on, with constant tinkering around the edges, making forays into newness when we can, proffering the wisdom of our age while delighting in the easy perceptiveness of the next generation. With increasing longevity, patience might also come along.

I’d like to think that I shall continue to develop that attribute, especially if I consider, in the humility that’s sometimes foisted on me by our grown-up children, that there’s still so much to learn.

I shall try very hard to keep that flame of wonder and delight alive.