Behind every smile
Love.
A very simple yet most powerful weapon there is. It could conquer hearts, it could mold souls, it could mend shattered hopes but most of all it could subdue hate.
Dale Carnegie writes in one of his greatest work “How to win friends and influence people” about Theodore Roosevelt’s
astonishing popularity. How he was most beloved among his peers. Even his servants loved him. His valet, James E. Amos, wrote a book about him entitled Theodore Roosevelt, Hero to His Valet. Here he shared an incident:
My wife one time asked the President about a bobwhite. She had
never seen one and he described it to her fully. Sometime later, the
telephone at our cottage rang. [Amos and his wife lived in a little
cottage on the Roosevelt estate at Oyster Bay.] My wife answered it
and it was Mr. Roosevelt himself. He had called her, he said, to tell
her that there was a bobwhite outside her window and that if she
would look out she might see it. Little things like that were so
characteristic of him.
You see what he did there? He was not an expert in psychology or human language but he was capable of spreading love.
But we all know that. We have all seen it in action. We are all convinced of its potential. But what is the secret? What is the language of Love? That is the real question that every individual asked who have suffered through this misery and the answer is very simple actually.
“The reason why Birds and Horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other Birds and Birds and Horses”
Dale Carnegie
Were you expecting that? I certainly weren’t. According to a survey, By a New York Telephone Company the most used word in a conversation during a phone call is the pronoun “I”. It was used 3900 times in 500 telephone conversations. Could you imagine that?
Few days back, I was attending a class of a fellowship program. There they explained how people are more interested in expressing themselves rather than listening to others achievements. And I said to myself “Oh! No wonder I have so little friends.” They told us to conduct a survey where we have to go up to people and ask them about their day, how they have been doing and stuff like that. Basically anything that would show more interest in them and so we did that.
Every morning I enter my university there is a lady sitting there checking up on us to make sure only authorized people would pass. Like everyone else I ignored her. But then at some point I started greeting her. With her eyes focus behind my back, she would slightly nod her head and mumble a reply. That became our routine. Days turned into months and months into years. Until one day I saw her beaming with a most beautiful smile as she would see me. I though maybe she saw someone she knew. But it continued. Every time I would enter the gates, she would start sparkling. Just seeing her like that would made my entire day.
That smile was more than enough to give me courage. To walk up to her and I did just that.
In a brief conversation we had I realized how painful her smile was. Her left hand was completely paralyzed. She was unable to operate through it at all. But she couldn’t quit job because her husband was hospitalized and she was the sole breadwinner for the family.
It was then I realized how much she is suffering through, yet she still was able to pull up that smile. She was happy. Genuinely happy to see someone cared. Cared to ask. Cared to bother.
Seeing how just a little gesture of care mattered so much to her, made me wonder how many other smiles I might have ignored? How many other people out there are waiting to be acknowledged, to be heard. And it all boils down to one thing.
To be interested than being interested.
