My youngest granddaughter is eleven. She recently stayed over for a few days, which for me was a non-stop, high-energy, why walk when you can run, goof-around, back-and forth word-play episode of exuberant joy.
Being a senior adult, I’m mostly surrounded by other seniors, many of whom I love dearly, but all of whom, like me, have serious things on their minds. Being eleven is just on the cusp of grappling with serious things, yet close enough to childhood to still dip into its exuberant pool of delight and excitement. Once past twelve, something happens: we quickly grow up and living changes from childhood delight to serious adult preoccupations.
Toddlers exhibit the same pool of exuberance: endless curiosity and openness to new experiences, the same impulse that inclines babies, in their eagerness to encounter the world, to put everything in their mouths, or at least to try.
It’s possible to be intoxicated with life, we all have that potential. The combination of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin comprise our organic path to exuberance. In adulthood, stress-induced cortisol takes over, and overwhelmed by the seriousness of life, our yearning for exuberance often gets satisfied artificially through chemical intoxication, the stimulation of our pleasure centers with drugs and alcohol.
For a couple of days, I had the opportunity to reconnect with my 11-year-old self though the eyes and thoughts of my granddaughter, to get a reminder of what I once was and we are all capable of being: silly, curious, playful, and creative. We walked to the town plaza and on the way sampled cherry-sized red and yellow plums hanging over the sidewalk. We made up stories. Back home, we ate poached salmon. We swept and mopped the floor like it was a great adventure, and in the afternoon, my other granddaughter, now 17 years old, came over and I watched the two of them playfully noodle around for a couple of hours in the swimming pool that’s available to condo residents.
Exuberance is the experience of being in love with being, it’s just that simple. As we age life gets complicated, and we get distracted from the simple joys of living. Worries take up emotional space, and the idea of non-being increasingly intrigues and vexes us. Life becomes a serious business filled with responsibility, obligation, and commitment. We laugh less and look outside ourselves for entertainment. At our worst, we fall into depression and inflict our misery on others through violence and aggression.
As a social worker, my late wife Norma would often offer the opinion that we adults are large, old children, and that the child we were is still inside us; nothing about how people behave should be a surprise. The child inside wants to express itself and does. It feels pain, joy, sorrow, excitement, fear, hope, disappointment, love, jealousy, attraction, envy – the entire panoply of human emotions at work within us. In adulthood, if it actually exists, these emotions can be a vehicle for self-realization, self-discovery and transformation. How we feel is who we are, even as it changes moment to moment.
I’m back to being alone, but something in me awakened, and after spending a couple of sweaty hours in the heat repainting a door yesterday, I walked down to the swimming pool and noodled around for an hour. Floating on my back, looking up at the trees and clear blue sky, I felt absolutely joyful.
