To My Magnificent Agent, Staff and Friends:
In her popular novel, The Hunger Games, author Suzanne Collins crafted the following line: “And then he gives me a smile that just seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me.” Far too often we underestimate the significance and value of a simple smile, not only for others, but most importantly for ourselves. Buddhist monk and author, Thich Nhat Hanh, beautifully describes the enormous power that emanates from it. He said, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
Here’s a short story by Mrs. Charles A. Lane that illustrates the illumination that our smiles can bring into an otherwise unlit world.
All day long he sat in his high chair, looking down into the narrow street. He could see by leaning forward, a bit of blue sky over the tall warehouse opposite of the apartment where he and his mother lived. Sometimes a white cloud would drift across the blue. Sometimes it was all dull gray.
But the street was more interesting. There were people down there. In the early morning men and women were hurrying to their work. Later the children came out and played on the pavement, sidewalks and in the gutters. Sometimes they danced and sang, but often they were quarrelsome. In the spring the street-organ man came, and then everyone seemed happy.
The boy’s sad little face looked out all day long, observing all of the commotion in stoic silence. Only when he saw his mother coming did he smile and wave his hand.
“I wish I could help you, Mother,” he said one night. “You work so hard, and I can’t do anything for you.”
“Oh, but you do!” she cried quickly. “It helps me to see your face smiling down at me from the window. It helps me when you wave your hand. It makes my work lighter all day to think you will be there waving to me when I go home.”
“Then I’ll wave harder and smile bigger,” said the little fellow.
And the next night a tired workman, seeing the mother look up and answer the signal, looked up too. Such a little, pinched face he saw at the high window. But how cheery his smile was! The man laughed to himself and waved his cap, and the boy, a little shyly, returned the greeting.
So it went. The next evening the workman nudged his comrade to look up at the “poor little chap sitting, so patient, at the window,” and again the smile shone out as two caps waved in the air below him.
Days came and passed, and the boy, through his smile and waves, acquired more and more “friends.” Men and women went out of their way to pass by the building and trade smiles and waves with the little lame boy in the window. Life didn’t seem quite as hard to them, especially when they thought how dreary it must be for him. Sometimes a flower found its way to him, or an orange, or a colored picture. The children stopped quarreling when they spotted him watching them, and they actually began playing certain games that he seemed to like most, just to amuse him. It pleased them to see how eager he was to share in their good times.
“Tell the lad that we couldn’t get on without him,” said one of the weary laborers to the mother one night. “Tis a great thing to have a brave heart. It makes us all brave, too. Tell him that.”
And you may be sure that she did.
“What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.” – Joseph Addison
Have an AWE-full weekend!
Bill