Last week, when Spring was suddenly here in New Jersey, an older woman introduced herself to me while I was looking at the daffodils in the supermarket wondering whether to buy the flowers or not. She was a very kind lady, warm and smiling. Before she said goodbye she told me: "Do not postpone joy!" and she repeated it to emphasize its importance.

So I bought the flowers and afterwards I felt so happy that she had shared her joyful message with me. In Denmark, where I come from, it is highly unusual when strangers talk to you in the street so the American openness can take some getting used to but I appreciate it more and more... And now, I want to share her message: Do not postpone joy!

This woman is not the first woman who have said that to me (Nadime Gordimer has written a wonderful poem about it) and I personally agree that way too often we tend to postpone having fun and doing something we like - because of duties, plans, stress or something else. Many people don't have time to do what they feel like here and now because their calendar is full of plans.

But I don't understand how you can know what you feel like a week, a month, or two, into the future. My advise is not to stop planning but to leave some room open just to do "whatever" and being open to a change of plans every now and then. Joy can come and go. Maybe what we felt like doing yesterday is not what we want to do tomorrow and opportunities can pass us by. By taking for granted that we can i.e. have dinner or go out with a good friend later on, we are in a way taking for granted that the opportunity will still be there in the future. So another way of looking at enjoying something is that it is in fact to appreciate the opportunities of the here and now instead of taking them for granted. This being said, I know this is not always possible but as far as it is I recommend doing it!

I guess I should confess that this is written by someone who took eight years to find out that it was more important to be in the same country as her fiance than to follow her career path... So I still have a long way to go before I can learn not to postpone joy...