In his books “The Surrender Experiment” and “The Untethered Soul” Michael A Singer suggests that “you have to really mean it when you say that you choose to be happy. And you have to mean it regardless of what happens.”
Meanwhile, in his beautiful poem “Love After Love” Derek Walcott urges us to "love again the stranger who was yourself", to give back our hearts to our own being.
Although both authors I’ve quoted from are men, I’m aiming this particular post primarily at women, simply because we are worse at loving ourselves than men tend to be. I know that’s a generalisation and isn’t 100% true anywhere along the gender spectrum, but the tendency is there. Most women find it harder to accept themselves ‘as is’ than do most men. If you are not woman and are reading this, and if it resonates with you, then please alter the pronouns to suit.
Loving yourself has to be the first step towards unconditional happiness. Being able to be happy with whatever is starts with being happy with whatever / whoever we are. Changes, improvements, may be necessary, may not be, but recognise that we love the baby even before it begins to learn, to grow, to change. Love yourself now.
Look in the mirror and smile for all you have achieved since you were that newborn. Look in the mirror and smile at the strength and resilience you have shown in getting to where you are today. Look in the mirror and smile with understanding, compassion and forgiveness for all the errors of
your ways. Look in the mirror and smile in anticipation of all the adventures still to come, on the journey that continues. Look in the mirror and love that woman, love that soul that is smiling back at you.
She knows you that woman. Every moment she waits for you, not only at home, in the mirror in the hall or the bathroom, but out on the street, in shop windows, and shining cars, in lakes on mountainsides, ponds in gardens. Everywhere a reflective surface might catch a glimpse of you, she waits to see you and smile at you and remind you of all of who you are in all your glorious ordinariness and eccentricity as you go about your days. Look out for her, and smile back.
It is late in life to be doing so, but I am learning to smile again. Practicing making it my face’s default setting. Understand I have no reason not to smile. My life has been, and remains, easy enough. There is no hidden trauma, only the normal run of the mill shifts and sadnesses. In fact, I have been told that I am a fundamentally happy person, looking for upsides, finding positives even when at my lowest ebbs. I like to think that is true. The smile thing though…that’s a weird one.
Over many years, I learned not to smile. The drip feed of "what are you grinning at?" or "what are you looking so pleased about?" or "what’s so funny?" eventually took hold. It seemed that the world didn’t want me to smile. So I stopped. My face settled into a morose aspect.
My last boss wrote on a 360 degree review that if he could say only one thing to me it would be: I wish you would smile more. At the time, I think my response would have been: I wish I had more to smile about. Work was pressured, and getting worse. We weren’t being allowed to do what we knew needed to be done to get the results allegedly required. The word relentless was actually used by the so-called Leadership Team. Relentless focus, relentless improvement. I wasn’t the only one who felt that the whole shebang had just become too frigging relentless.
I got lucky though, because that was then, and this is now. This is four years after I left the organisation. Four years of change since my entire life up-ended. And into the first year of totally embracing who I have become during that time. I have journaled a great deal about who I am becoming – it took a few days of focussed (playful focussing, not the relentless kind) to figure out that I have ‘become’ the woman I want to be, probably always wanted to be. Of course there will always be shifts and changes and challenges and all the rest…but I face them now, from a different place, a stronger place, a happier place.
And I am going to smile about all of that.
I mean it when I say I choose to be happy. Even in this world that is in need of so much healing, I choose to be happy now. While I can. Because I can. I will look with kindness and compassion on that which needs to change; I will look with curiosity on that which I don’t (yet) understand; but I will not allow those things to define my days. My days are defined by the kindness of others, the beauty of nature, the wisdom of the sages. My days are defined by abundance. My days are defined by doing the work that I now want to do and put out into the world, the creative work of just looking
and seeing and showing and sharing, the beauty that exists all around us, despite all the other stuff.
I choose what defines my days, and what defines my days makes me smile. I hope that I can make others do so too, now and then, occasionally.
In fact, that’s more than a hope. I know that I can. Sometimes by words, sometimes by deeds…but what thrills me more is noticing that I can make others smile, simply by smiling at them.
Coming home the other day, I passed a cyclist, on the pavement where he really shouldn’t have been,
but I stepped out of his way anyway, it was easy enough to do and he responded with "Thank you! And thank you for that wonderful smile!” I wasn’t actually smiling at him. I was just being happy after a good swim, walking in the sunshine, and having worked out a way to make the following day less rushed than I’d thought it was going to be.
So it seems a smile can brighten someone’s day, even when it isn’t specifically intended to do so.
That being so, what if we intentionally set out to brighten someone’s day? What if when we set out each morning, we decided to smile at strangers, acquaintances, neighbours, family & friends? Just because.
It might be a passing isn’t it a beautiful day smile. Or maybe, an I know, sometimes it’s tough, I see you smile. A wry I know you wish you hadn’t done that, but it’s ok smile. An aren’t children / animals / otherpeople so funny conspiratorial smile. A smile can be whatever we want it to be, if it comes from the heart. It can be a supermarket queue it’s alright, I don’t mind waiting smile. Or a thank you smile when someone allows us in front of them. It can be a well done smile, or a never mind, you did good anyway, better luck next time, smile.
We’ve all heard the theory that it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown. I have no idea if that’s true, but I am figuring out that you cannot smile and stay miserable. So find something to smile about, and if you can’t do so, then I feel for you, but ask that you try to smile anyway – not all day, not all the time, I recognise that we need to frown, and weep, and do all the other things our faces seem to have been designed to express, but when you can, smile anyway. Think of it as a gift to the person who sees it.
My experience is that a smile is a gift doubled in being returned, and most often it is.
