Smile! It will make your day

One day when I was about 15 years old (at the peak of my teenage life), I went for a walk in the neighbourhood with my mother. After a while, I noticed that she had a constant smile on her face, and she was smiling away at everybody passing by, and they were smiling back at her too. At one point, she smiled at a woman passing by, and the woman did not smile back at her. So, I asked her if she knew that lady and she said: “No, I don’t”. So, with all the attitude that I had gathered during the day without having made any real contribution to my personal life or the world, I asked her, “Why would you smile at someone you don’t know? That’s so weird, no wonder she did not smile back at you”. And because my mom knows me too well, she responded with a firm note stating, “What makes you think your smile is so precious that you cannot give it to a stranger?”

At that time, I felt bad because my mom made me think that my smile was not precious and that I should smile at everyone around me. But I know she responded to me to make me realize that I give myself too much importance (it was the teenage hormones, I swear). But, now that I think of it, I have realized that my smile (like everybody else’s) is very precious and that when I smile at a stranger, I have the power to bring a smile to that stranger’s face too. I have noticed that when you smile at a stranger, 99% of the time, the stranger would smile back at you, which they would not have done had you not smiled at them in the first place. So, when you smile at a stranger, who at that point might be going through some trouble in their life, despite their problems, they smile back. As soon as s/he sees you smile, they realize that the world is not that bad and their worries can be sorted out to some extent.

I read a saying, “One should always smile at children to make them realize that the world is a nice place to live in”. But what about those fully grown adults who also need the reassurance that the world is a lovely place to live in? Should we not smile at them? I think smiling is a healthy habit everyone should follow because it makes the stranger towards whom you smile happy and makes you feel good when you receive that smile back. So I would ask people to smile more, not to make a difference in other people’s lives but to make a difference in their own life.