The thought points to a conversation with my friend recently. We were talking about smiles and I have seen her smile so often and that smile so contagious that I decided to ask her the secret behind her smile and she says.“I smile because I don’t find a reason not to!”I get a little more curious cos the answer sounded so romantic and perfect and I was sure that she was hiding something. I asked –How can you smile when things aren’t fine with you?” How can you erase the bad things that happened to you? And she says with a sparkling smile –“I haven’t erased yet but I don’t choose it to affect my present. I’ll see what to do with it!
COME ON! I DON’T BELIEVE SOMEONE CAN SMILE WHEN THEY ARE SAD!
Of course I was very skeptical when I listened to her. It felt unnatural, I mean if I am sad, I am sad, I feel bad about it, I cry about it, I make a scene if I want to till I feel better and probably continue further till I get enough attention. That feels very natural, simple and probably that is what I have trained myself for and what I am good at. When there is an alternate view completely opposite to what I do, it makes me think, it makes me question, it makes me want to prove her wrong! So the next thought was that I would try and implement the same and prove her wrong! So much for the noble means :P
I CAN PROVE THAT YOU ARE WRONG!
So, the next time I tried naturally I won cos I wanted to win and I wanted to prove her wrong. It didn’t work, or rather I couldn’t react with a smile, I kept feeling. I tried another time but with the same result. I thought maybe I am doing it for the tougher ones, let me do it for the simpler ones and I tried, it felt good :). It felt nice to be smiling, I was pretending that the whole occurrence didn’t even bother me. It made me feel light, it made life look a little simple and to my wonder, I can’t believe that she was right!
THE LEARNING!
I do understand that it is extremely hard to smile when the times are tough, when the situations are rough and there are not many solutions in vicinity. It may not sound like a sane solution at all. But the more we feel bad about it, the more we add reasons to feel bad about, the more we add stress to what we were feeling bad about. Now we feel worse, either for the same reason or for the reason of sadness alone. I feel that sadness is a cycle, it is contagious. Ever been in a situation when you feel bad about someone and you start thinking about all the things they have done that have hurt you, made you feel bad? Why do we do that? Why don’t we think of the good times? Why don’t we think of something magical that has happened with them?
CAN WE DO IT?
I am sure it is not just the bad times we have had, or else we would never be in touch with them for so long. What if we try and look at all the good things they have done to us, all the good times we have spent. I know it is a little outside of what we do regularly, similar to what my friend did. But does that work? I read somewhere that when you smile, your body pumps feel-good endorphins which don’t let you be in sorrow for a long time. (Way to bring science into it don’t you think? ;) ) . Why do we want to keep mulling over something till we feel really bad about it, maybe shout at them and prove them wrong, gratify our ego so that we feel good. But the question is AT WHAT COST?
ARE YOU SAYING THAT WE OVER REACT?
I am not saying that we overreact to a situation, maybe we do or maybe we don’t. Maybe we don’t actually realize what is reaction and what is over-reaction when we are in a fit of emotions. But we are evolved people aren’t we? Is it so easy to make us feel bad about something? If someone can make you feel sad very easily, then don’t you think you are giving them a lot of opportunities to and yourself a lot less to feel good? (How to stop overthinking?!)
ITS ALL FOR HAPPINESS
We are really smart people, we have a lot of quotes about happiness, a lot of ideas about the world and the way the world should do things and we also have a lot of ideas as to how we can be better at those. But it is damn hard to implement, and it is very easy to look at something outside the box with a little bit of suspicion like I did. But if it is going to enhance the quality of your life, don’t you think it might be worth a try?
AND THERE IS YOUR HAPPINESS
All said and done, Happiness starts right there, under your nose. When you are ready to let the things go and focus on the good, when you are ready to look at the bigger picture of life and relations than the minor setbacks, when you tell yourself that you are the person solely responsible for your happiness, well then there it is! You have found it, the elixir of happiness :)
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Loved it, don’t know how many good posts from past I have missed Vidhyashree :-) Loved your cartoons too. Keep them coming,Ah! I have heavy backlog to read them all now, my good wishes,keep rocking guys :-)
Human emotions are controlled by ourselves. We tend to go in search of happiness when we can find those in our minds itself. We just need to understand that we can find happiness in whatever small things that we do. But hardly we do realize that!
True Krishna :). That is perhaps a fascinating part of the human emotions.. It is in all those small beautiful things which hold a quintessence in our lives :)
Effective post. Old habits die hard. The least I could try is not spread my sadness….:)
Thank you Vidhya :).
He he, that’s an interesting alternate way to look at things :)
he he he …. This may sound funny but when I was a kid, to overcome from my sadness I used to do a trick, I put myself in front of mirror and look at me. I always found the answer that I look best when I smile and it works for me…. :P. It helps me in developing a belief that we have lots of reason to smile nearby then why not to smile and to look fresh…. :)
Liked the post !
He he he :D.. That sounds good. I would like to do it too, but I doubt if I am that cute ;)..
That’s so true, a smile is such a perfect thing to wear and although it seems it is talked about so much, it is very rare that people actually put it into use. And you said it, we have lots and lots of reasons to smile :)
There are many quotes about to remain happy in all the conditions . as you write about your friend’s smile , there are lot of people, who remains happy in deep sorrow too. Happiness is the state of your mind . I just want to say in computer language ” save happiness and delete sorrows “”
Thank you Yogen.. I agree a lot of them are in deep sorrow as well. But somehow that doesnt catch the eye so well. Maybe cos it is something we see often, as a norm, as a usual practice. But someone doing something like this is pretty impressive indeed and I would certainly like to implement that as a part of my life. I would honestly prefer that smile. People say I have a good one ;)
Nice post. I agree happiness is a state of mind. When one is sad, they can give a sad smile, I think.
Thank you Abhi :).. I guess so, I have given those sad smiles, sadly they don’t uplift me as much as the stupid smiles do. I hail stupidity a little higher ;)
Nicely expressed :-)…the point is if we wish to be happy we can always have a reason ..trifle it may be but it lies in out heart… always..
Thank you Maniparna.. I guess we can paraphrase a statement – “There are hundreds of reasons to be sad and one to be happy – that decision to be happy ” ..
It certainly lies here, right in the heart of the hearts :)
Absolutely… loved the quote.. :-)
Totally second your opinion ! It’s only human to feel sad and the only way to deal with it is to try n to work out a way to snap out of it as early as possible instead of obsessing over it .:-)n what better start than a smile :-)
Says the ever smiling Preethi :).. True, the only way is to snap out of it as soon as possible and of course THE SMILE :)
Indeed, happiness is right there under our nose and we go searching all over the world for it!
I just posted a blog similar to this. ‘Miracles’
True Matheikal, it is right under the nose and so easy to miss out on sometimes. That sounds cool, I would love to read it soon :)
I’m trying to find happiness. Where should I look?
https://inspire99.com/where-is-this-happiness/
Awesome post Vinay. Honestly, sometimes we feel sad about incidents, that can really make us sad.
People say that I too smile on any condition, it is not like that I simle even at some bad situation of others life. But then I smile even at the bad times of my own life, it is because I get the strength to face that adverse situation from my own smile. I have seen that there are people around me who look towards me to get strength and when I became sad it also makes them sad, while when I do smile, no matter how worse is the situation, they too get the required strength and hence I do smile.
Thankooo Alok :)..
True, I think it is the decision to smile no matter how bad things seem. There will be those bad days, those sad moments when we feel helpless but it is that strand of strength that keeps us alive, that uplifts us and makes us pretty neat as people..
It does take a lot to smile at our own miseries and it certainly is an evolution the moment we start doing that :).
Cheers to all the smiles Alok :)