Smile Like You Mean It



It seems to many that a smile means something positive, a semblance of happiness at least partially present in the bearer of it. Yet, how much of this age old stream of thought still stands? You probably have heard of people telling their children not to "show a black face", and that it affects the mood of everyone around. That's some great social observation and application there isn't it? The world could do with less sadness, so let's start by not being sad ourselves. Simple enough a theory, it just might work.

And then again, the thing about such theories is that they are just that. Theories. Trying to move the momentum of your mood in the socially acceptable direction just happens to have this way of backfiring and blowing the hydrogen right out of your hot air balloon. And yet, isn't it so much easier to just stick with the acceptable? A happy person makes everyone happy. Sure he would, wouldn't he, since a happy person wouldn't be radiating any negative emotion in their general direction.
There definitely will be those who wouldn't give two shits to the public opinion, and go their own self-fulfilling way down that road of less traffic lights. And then again, traffic lights are there for a reason. A pretty good one too.
Then we have those who genuinely want to up the relative positive of the mood of all parties involved, for it feels good for others to feel good.

Undoubtedly so, either way we have a situation where the happy face seems to bring just about that many more better outcomes, and hey so shouldn't that be the way to go? After all it sounds simple enough, and everyone benefits.
Therein lies the problem where sometimes you never really get to that point where the benefits can even be reaped. Your emotion trip just met with the roadblock of the across the causeway kind, and your tank's empty from the get go. It's no wonder it's so hard to pinpoint just why the smile seems so handy a tool to use when the vehicle breaks down, since there wasn't much to pinpoint from in the beginning, other than that your mood happened to have this cruddy core.

Maybe the smile may be easy as easy to pull off as it is to put on, but hell it's only easy because not doing so would be worse.

We don't all try to give
Politician smiles,
Eyes and teeth and the
Obligatory wave.
But such a picture perfect
Perspective covers up
Wholly well the hole
That lies on the inside.
Not because we want
To, but because You
Do.

viewed from here,
2'2"