Smile, please!
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
‘Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.’ Thich Nhat Hanh
I would amend that sentence slightly to say, ‘another person’s smile can be the source of your joy.’
A small child’s smile or a baby’s first gummy smile cannot fail to make others smile, too.
A smile is ‘a pleased, kind or amused facial expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed.’ Smiling releases endorphins, dopamine and serotonin and it’s contagious, possibly even more so than yawning. (I bet you’re all yawning, now! 😉)
The average woman, if there is such a being, smiles sixty-two times a day but the average man smiles only about eight. I wonder who carried out the research that delivered that tantalising piece of information?
People tend to smile if they have been exposed and are accustomed to it. I remember one three-year-old child who was remarkable because she never smiled. When I met her parents, I understood why, because they didn’t smile either. Normally, when people are introduced, they smile at each other, or, at least, that is my experience.
The little girl learnt to smile!
Smiling defuses tension and indicates a willingness to engage. If the smile on the face of the tiger belies its true nature, at least, for that short time, relaxation is possible.
If smiling is good for us, then surely laughter must be even better. When was the last time you had a good belly laugh and didn’t you feel so much better for it?
The average four-year-old laughs three hundred times a day, but the average forty-year-old only laughs four times a day. Again, who discovered that statistic?
I know people who rarely smile or laugh and seem to have no sense of humour whatsoever. Others giggle inanely at almost everything – perhaps they’re nervous.
Americans tend to smile the most, followed by Canadians. Australians are near the top of the list for the most smiling people. I imagine UK is quite low down, but not as far down as Russia, Poland and Romania.
At least, that was what I understood until I looked at the 2024 indicator of smiley countries. The first one on that index is Finland, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. Australia is tenth and USA is nowhere.
It’s all nonsense, of course, much like the weather forecasts and horoscopes. Keep looking until you find a calculation that suits you! 😊
