Listing resolutions last January first, I resolved to laugh more — especially at myself.

It’s far too easy, I find, to let life grow terribly serious. For me, far too often the “shoulds” overwhelm the “coulds” and I find myself struggling to keep up.

Keep up with what? Sure, the shining sun illuminates a dusty table I’d missed or a cobweb in the corner of that window where cobwebs innately like to grow. In any worth a moment of stress?

I had a day last month that became an eye-opener to me. Because of commitments (if I do say I’ll do something, I’ll do my very best to be there), I had barely a half hour between rising until eleven at night.

It didn’t take much to realize I could drive myself into a very deep state of frustration very quickly — or I could sit back to relax and enjoy all the activities that had somehow piled up just on this one day. Guess what? The table didn’t get dusted and the spiders are still safe — for at least one more day.

And, yes, I can look back and laugh. Well, I was laughing then, too. Life is far too rewarding to be taken too seriously.

In that same January column I mentioned listening to any number of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, enjoying the music even though the plots hardly varied.

I started then to talk about Jane and her lament. She’s found in “Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride” as as the curtain rises on Castle Bunthorne.

A chorus of lovely young maidens plays on their lutes and tells us that they are “Twenty Lovesick Maidens We.” All, it turns out, are smitten with Reginald Bunthorne, a “fleshly poet.” Watching the comely young lasses is Lady Jane, “old enough to know about such things” though she too has her heart set on Reginald.

She believes he should marry her – and quickly since she is not getting any younger. Resting on her cello (which I imagined — and actually is pictured — as a bass), Lady Jane laments

Silvered is the raven hair, Spreading is the parting straight,

Mottled the complexion fair, Halting is the youthful gait,

Hollow is the laughter free, Spectacled the limpid eye,

Little will be left of me In the coming bye and bye.

Can it get worse? Of course.

Fading is the taper waist, Shapeless grows the shapely limb.

And although severely laced, Spreading is the figure trim!

Stouter than I used to be, Still more corpulent grow I,

There will be too much of me In the coming bye and bye!”

To complete the plot, Lady Jane ends up marrying an officer of the dragoons while Reginald, who by the end has become a “crotchety, cracked young man, an ultra-poetical, super aesthetical, out-of-the-way young man,” decides

In that case unprecedented

Single I must live and die –

I shall have to be contented

With a tulip or a li-LY.

Do not all of us, men perhaps as well (ahem!), know this feeling as we approach those years? Why not go ahead and sing?

This also struck me as the ultimate comedy for those of us no longer pretending to be tender young maidens. (I can’t even remember those days! Were they really that good?) Perhaps during this coming winter I’ll transpose the music to something that might fit my voice (last I tried to sing I was descending into the cellar of the bass range) and play around with putting together music and (horrors!) voice and bass.

Strictly only for me – I promise.

Susan Crossett has lived outside Cassadaga for more than 20 years. A lifetime of writing led to these columns as well as two novels. Her Reason for Being was published in 2008 with Love in Three Acts following in 2014. Both novels are now available at Lakewood’s Off the Beaten Path bookstore. Information on all the Musings, her books and the author may be found at Susancrossett.com.