America 250: How to Move Forward When You're Stuck in Five O'Clock Traffic

Opinion

By Barbara Presnell

I am not one to sticker up my car. Despite how freely I seem to share the vulnerabilities of my life, I don't want them on display. So, I keep my window glass clean and my opinions to myself.

But when my friend gave me a bumper sticker at Christmas, I surprised myself by not thinking much before peeling off the back and centering it on the rear window of my SUV.

"DON'T POSTPONE JOY," it says, in bold, blue letters.

I think the gifter told me it was made to remember a friend who died too young. We all have those, so to display it felt like sharing. The words can carry special significance for any of us caught up in despair.

I've been a bit self-conscious about my bumper sticker, waiting on a response before deciding whether to peel it off or keep it. I'm not a "joy" person, that is, one of those folks who are happy, upbeat, positive, and smiling all the time. "Christ-like," they are sometimes called, and that is so not me. I'm no Anne Lamott, no Mary Oliver. I have a sense of humor that bites, even though I don't mean it to. I've spent a lot of my life as a glass-half-empty person, with gloom and doom as my default perspective.

A few months have passed, and very few people have said anything about my bumper sticker. In fact, almost nobody.

But just last week, while I was stuck in rush hour traffic trying to turn left onto Center from State Street—enough to cause anyone to lose what joy they had—the man waiting in the lane beside me motioned for me to roll down my window.

"I noticed your sticker," he called through the window. He was an older man in an older but well-cared-for car, shirt sleeves, very slight smile, distinctly Southern accent. "What kind of joy are you talking about?"

I hadn't considered it. I had no idea where he was going with this.

"You know," I said. "Joy. Whatever kind you want."

"Like Jesus?" he asked.

"Sure!" I said, as the line of cars began to move. "Whatever you want!"

He gave me a thumbs-up and a wide smile as he pulled away, and I eased forward and made my left turn, and that was that.

But it wasn't. I kept thinking about it the rest of the afternoon, that week, and even now.

I don't really know what joy is, but I know it when I feel it. I know it when I put my pen to the page and write something from my heart. I know it when I tuck my little grandson into bed, rub his back, and sing "Blackbird," his favorite lullaby.

"You were only waiting for this moment to be free," says the brilliant and beautiful song, and I sing it through twice. It's what I want for that little boy, what I want for me.

I postpone joy every day when I get too caught up in what's going on with the Strait of Hormuz, which I will never see in my lifetime. I postpone it when I don't spend enough time outside, creature of nature that I am.

I postpone it when I let things I cannot control take over my brain. I postpone it in the early morning when I wake up thinking about all the things that make me sad. "Get up, Barbara," I eventually tell myself. Shake it off and go on with your day. It's taken me a long time to learn that, but it's the only way to move forward.

Some call it Jesus. I call it love. Some call it unrealistic. I call it hope.

It's that kind of joy that helps me fly into the light of the dark black night.

I drive my own car, literally and figuratively. When I look in the rearview mirror, my bumper sticker looks back at me, not in reverse but in perfect, face-forward order:

DON'T POSTPONE JOY.

Thanks, dear car, for the reminder. And to all of you driving behind me, give my simple message pause before you drive on. Maybe a thumbs-up and a smile when you drive away.