There is something inherently wonderful in a smile. In seeing someone smile. Whether it is a full blown idiotic grin or a secret smirk. Whether it is expressed openly with others or an automatic reaction. Smiling is great. I’m all for it.
When I see others smiling it makes me smile. It makes me pause and realise that the world may not be such an awful place after all. There are people having a good day. There are people who have reasons to smile.
Growing up there was a poem I learnt off by heart on this very topic. The opening lines were: smiling is infectious/you catch it like the flu/when I saw someone smile today/I started smiling too. There is some truth to these words. Smiling is catching. I can’t stop a grin spreading across my face when I spot others smiling to themselves. It makes me remember the good times, the good friends, the good family I have. It makes me smile at the good fortune I have in my life. I smile at the joke I heard, the funny movie I saw, the little things that make life enjoyable. It’s not always the big things; the small things have great power over us too.
Smiling is also hard to conceal. We’ve all caught a friends eye across a room and been unable to stop smiling or suppress a giggle. There is something about happiness, and smileyness which radiates out of us. I’m going to call this our happiness aura. It’s quite simple. When we’re happy it shows, we smile and the light shines out of us. We can’t hide it, and why would we want to? I don’t think we realise the power our smile can have. This was the very topic of the poem I learnt growing up which ended: I thought about my smile/and realised what it’s worth/a single smile like mine/could travel around the earth.
It is within our power everyday to start a chain reaction of smiles. We can create a smiling domino effect. The woman on the street when I was walking to work the other day had no idea the impact she would have on my day. She smiled and I smiled with her. Perhaps unbeknownst to me someone saw my smile and followed suit. Not only do our smiles make others smile but smiling makes us happy. If we force ourselves to smile we subconsciously improve the day we’re having by raising our own happiness levels. The impact our happiness can then have on others throughout the day is nothing short of limitless. My diatribe on smiling over I will end with this thought. We should all try and smile more. Until I achieve total world smileyness you will find me smiling to myself and not caring who notices 🙂