Living the Moment

It gets harder as I get older to tap into the emotion I label joy.  To me, joy is the carefree, content, happy feeling that used to occur, however fleeting, in certain situations - watching a powerful storm move in, or gatherings with good friends.  It's not necessarily a quiet mind, although there is some of that, but it is a relaxing of tension and living the moment for what it is, and not what will happen in 30 minutes and  not what happened a year ago.  I wonder if we gather so much baggage through the simple of act of living that it makes it harder and harder to let go?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I just wonder what it is about life that seems so hard sometimes.  Why do we, as we get older, lose so much capacity for joy and for appreciating the small things?  Do we feel we don't have the right to do that anymore?  That we are so busy trying to get things done and take care of business that we aren't entitled to slow down and just appreciate the moment?  I have to remind myself all the time to slow down, and often even that doesn't work.  I wonder how many times in the day I tell my kiddos to "hurry" because we are running late, or how few times I sit down just to sit, for no other purpose, and pay attention to the slower things. 

I'm rambling, and I know it, but sometimes writing is how I think.  I have a sort of slow correspondence going with a friend from high school right now, talking about our lives and the different routes we took.  It makes me ponder the "me" that existed 20 years ago, the emotions and person that I was then.  No doubt that we all change over time, and while many aspects of that person are long gone (and good riddance!), there are some aspects that I'd like to reclaim, such as the capacity for much more joy in my life. I just don't know how to start doing that.