High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘smile’

The hillside that borders my driveway is peppered with hundreds of orange and yellow jewelweed blossoms, tiny blooms no bigger than my thumbnail.  The bumblebees love them, diving deep into the flowers’ throats until only their fuzzy tails and back legs stick out.

Along with the wild yarrow, goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace, the jewelweed marks the last of the summer’s floral bouquet.  I think of its blossoms as jewels of joy, and imagine that invisible fairies dance in its dew-sparkled leaves in the morning to the jingle of the little bells that hang suspended in the blossoms’ petals.

The fantasy quickly fades as I pull onto the highway and crawl to work through construction zones, listening to the morning’s news on the radio.  Unemployment up; the markets down.  The usual local mayhem and threats of impending global doom.

An ambulance sits at our clinic’s curb.  Already, I see, the crisis department is shipping the day’s first client off to the inpatient unit at the hospital.

The women at the front desk smile as I walk in the front door, looking like angels.  A vision of the joy jewels flashes through my mind again, as I greet them.  A little clump of nurses is gathered by the case worker’s door, their voices and gentle laughter pouring softly down the carpeted hall.

I climb the stairs to my office, and because it’s such a lovely morning, decide I’ll open my window to let in the birdsong and air.  One of our buses is loading the abused and neglected little kids who attend our county-sponsored summer program.  Must be a field trip day.  The last two in line are wearing orange and yellow.  They giggle as they climb aboard, holding the teachers’ hands.  And I see little jewels of joy.

Just as I pulled up to a stop light, a work van changed lanes to pull behind me.  Glancing in my rear view mirror, I was astonished to see face of a friend I hadn’t seen for many years sitting in the passenger seat and laughing with his companions.

When I knew him last, he had made some terrible choices and stumbled into a world of darkness and pain.  The thoughts of him that floated into my mind from time to time over the years dragged with them a trail of deep sadness.

Now suddenly here he was, alight with laughter on his way to a job, looking healthy and strong and well.  He wouldn’t have recognized my car or known it was me gazing through my sunglasses into the rear view mirror.  And I had only a moment to take in the glow of his smile.  But it was like the light of a thousand suns shining on my heart, and in just those few seconds, all the sorrow I had felt for him lifted and burned away.

“He’s happy!” I said to myself.  “He’s well!”

You know, that’s all we want from loved ones who have fallen into error: to know they found their bearings again, to know they’re happy.  What a healing realization the experience was for me!  Not only because the sorrow I had been carrying for my friend vanished, but because I realized that those who had seen me during my own sojourn into darkness were at peace about me now, that my smile, too, had the power to dispel all the sadness I once brought into their lives.

Finding the path to true joy is a miraculously healing thing, not only for the one who walks the path, but for all those who are touched by the light that radiates from him as well.  For the sake of all who love you, choose joy.

That smile, that smile of yours – Have you any idea?  Do you know it’s like the voice of the Divine speaking to my heart just to see it?  Do you know its power?

Do you know it rides through my eyes and slides through my brain and changes everything?  Do you know how it lifts and opens me?

Do you know that it sends hope flashing across my neurons, and makes possibilities dance in all my spaces?  Do you know the peace it brings me?  The relief?

When you smile at me, I’m more real somehow.  The world’s more real.  I count for something in its light.  I’m connected.  I’m forgiven.  I belong.

Oh, bring on that smile of yours, baby.  Pour it, bright and beaming, all over my day.  Let your sun shine, darlin’; let it shine.

“Everyone must have felt that a cheerful friend is like a sunny day, which sheds its brightness on all around; and most of us can, as we choose, make of this world either a palace or a prison.” ~John Lubbock

As I walked out my door on my way to work this morning, the patch of miniature crocuses beamed in the morning sun like so many smiles from the earth.  Just the sight of their simple, cheery light sent a ripple of happiness through me and I decided right then and there that I was going to beam smiles today, too.  I laughed, realizing I had chosen to wear yellow.  I would be a little crocus.

I work in a busy mental health clinic, and our waiting rooms are often filled with people locked in prisons of depression.  They sit, slumped and expressionless, looking as if a great weight presses down on them.

Each time my work took me though the waiting areas today, I made a point of catching the eyes of people and smiling at them as if they, personally, were the source of my happiness.  Some looked surprised.  Some looked puzzled, as if they were trying to figure out how they knew me.  And every one of them involuntarily smiled back, if only for the briefest second.

In the afternoon I got into the elevator with two clients from our day hospital.  The woman immediately returned my smile and hello.  Then I turned my gaze to the tall, morose looking man and sent him a little wave of acceptance and compassion on a quiet, gentle smile.  Ever so slightly the corners of his mouth rose.  The woman laughed and said to him, “What are you smiling about!”

He immediately seemed uncomfortable about that, and I said to her, “Oh, it’s my fault.  See?  My smile is contagious.  He couldn’t help it.”  She grinned.  “And so is yours, I see!”  I told her.  The doors opened and we got out, with me wishing them both a fine afternoon.

I remembered a story I heard once about a man who was on his way to throw himself off a bridge to end his life.  But then someone looked him in the eye, smiled, and said “Hello.”  That brief encounter with a friendly stranger made him realize he was real, his life was real, that he didn’t really want to throw it away.

I made up an acronym for “smile” once:  “Sharing Magnificently In Light Eternal.”  I hadn’t thought about that for a long time.  But empowered by the little yellow crocuses, I got to live the truth of it again today.

“Let your intentions be good,” wrote author Grenville Kleiser, “embodied in good thoughts, cheerful words, and unselfish deeds – and the world will be to you a bright and happy place in which to work and play and serve.”

Go lightly in the world.  Spread joy.  Be a shaft of sunlight.  Be a crocus.

Beam it up, baby.
Get your shine face on.
The world’s just waiting
for your smile, you know,
for your hello.

When they ask you how you are,
Say, “Beautiful!”
Say “Fabulous!”
Say “Lovin’ It!”
Say “On top of the world!”

Say it like your head is full of starshine,
Like you just fell in love.
And then be it, all aglow
And radiating your dazzle.

Pretend if you have to.
Let it be your best act,
Like you just stepped on stage
And into the spotlight,
And the crowd is whistling
And going wild, just because you’re here.

Somewhere in another dimension, after all, that’s the truth.
That’s the truth: You’re a star.

So beam it up, baby.
Get your shine face on.
The worlds’ just waiting
For your smile, you know,
For your hello.