Your Smile Makes Me Smile
Happiness magic we miss today.
In face-to-face interactions, when people mimic the facial expressions of others, they may also allow us to empathize with and experience the emotions underlying the expressions they mimic, this phenomenon is referred to as emotional contagion. Humans extract this emotional meaning from facial expressions in a matter of only a few hundred milliseconds.
Smile is one such contagious emotion which lifts our mood, as well as the moods of those around us. Now I don’t want to get deeper into the structural aspects of the smile as why we smile, why few others cannot or how painful the life is for people having neurological impairments or what are the benefits of smile. Instead, I am just rather very much enchanted by a smiling face.
Spontaneous Smiles and Spirituality
My spirits are always buoyed when an authentic smile drifts my way. The aura is beautiful enough to forget the pains, agony which might have taken place unintentionally at the core of our hearts. The bitterness, the stress, the anxiety, sadness flies away in no moment. I wonder if spirituality has a deeper connection with the spontaneous smiles.
Thailand is a Buddhist country, a developing nation where what to feed tomorrow is the greatest challenge people face every day yet it is called as the ‘Land of Smiles’. Anyone who has been there will sure agree with this. Thais are smiling everywhere from hospitals, streets, offices, hotels not because they are happy from inside but that’s how they are. Spread of happiness is at the peak there with so many faces looking at you with smile for no reason. This makes people feel more welcome and happy in a foreign land.
Attitudes and worldview that Buddhism teaches might have something to do with the sense of contentment people seem to exhibit in Thailand. The healthy attachments and values of kindness and gentleness contribute in allowing an authentic smile to emerge from the depths of their being.
That Unforgettable Smile
Many parents will agree that the most fascinating moment for them is when their newborn gives the first smile looking at their face. It drifts away all the fatigue, postpartum blues of the new parents, and they smile back to unconditionally love the baby forever more in life. I remember for me this moment was extra more special.
My daughter was born with unilateral congenital cataract. Unfortunately her first few days of life were spent visiting Doctors and conducting tests due to high jaundice along with cataract. She was diagnosed to have Galactosemia. A metabolic disease in which the body does not have enzymes to breakdown a simple sugar called galactose also present in milk causing neurological complications and possible mental retardation. Me and my husband personally never accepted this diagnosis as in spite of being breastfed for a month she seemed to develop normally.
It was her first month, and I was waiting for her big milestone to be achieved yet, her FIRST SMILE. Days kept passing and I kept swinging back and forth from faith to doubt and from doubt to faith. Will she smile?
Finally mother’s intuition was supported by Almighty. One day while I was playing with her, ‘She Smiled and I smiled back at her with overjoy’. I felt strengthened to fight a diagnosis I wasn’t ready to accept. This moment’s memory will always stay deep in my heart. My daughter was Galactosemia free a year later with a retest. My happiness had been doubled.
I agree that smile was a need for me at that time as opposed to the many unexpected smiles we come across every day, Yet I am sure the impact is can never be nonetheless in any case. A beggar girl holding her balloons with smiling face and torn clothes while you had been stressed of driving all the way or a person who smiles at you randomly at the grocery store while shopping, the contentment achieved is beyond explanation in each case.
Under the Masks
I feel the inability to see the generous, innocent smiles on the faces as they are covered with the masks now a days, is causing us more stress than the Covid-19 itself. A smile is essential in making others less fearful and helping them trust and relax. Being able to see smiles through remote online meetings is one of the blessings for sure, however learning to ‘smile through eyes’ is a needed skill to master in current times. So that next time when I will smile you shall also
S — see
M — miracles
I — in
L — life
E — everyday
