The Gift of a Smile

When I returned a purchase to Best Buy, the woman who helped me was closed off and even a little grumpy. But I know that all of us want to matter and one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone is to connect with kindness even when they are cranky. So, I asked her how her day was going, and she opened up a little bit as she told me she had the next two days off. I then asked about her plans and her first response was, “Oh you may think this is silly, but I’m very excited to purge my house. I started yesterday and I can hardly wait to get back to it.” I then responded with how wonderful it felt to simplify and organize things and she opened up like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. At the end of our conversation both of us were laughing.

Since we all want to matter, one of the great joys of my life is to go shopping. The joy doesn’t come from buying things, it comes from connecting at the checkout stand. I meet people in all states of mind and there’s only one person in all my years of connecting who stayed closed off. Instead of reacting, I knew she was trying to take care of a world of hurt by putting a wall between herself and life. It is so easy to react when somebody is being unpleasant and yet so healing when that person is met with kindness…even if they can’t open to it in that moment.

How do you come to the place where it becomes natural to meet the world in your heart? It comes from understanding that all the different variations of human expression you meet throughout your day also live inside of you. And when you can meet yourself with your own heart, whether you’re caught in irritation, self-pity, greed, dislike, anxiousness, fatigue or even resistance to a cold, it becomes easier and easier to meet other people when you see that they are caught in these familiar places.

The more your heart opens, the more you see we are all quietly hurting inside, longing for the warmth of a human heart. The more you can see whatever the person in front of you is experiencing, and understand that you have, at one time, been in that place too, it becomes easier to respond rather than to react even with difficult people.

You may not want to verbally engage with the clerk or anybody else who is helping you, but a smile is so powerful. To get a sense of how powerful it is, I invite you to smile right now and if you watch carefully, you’ll see it changes how you feel. With brain scans they have shown that a smile releases the feel-good-messengers in your brain such as dopamine, endorphins and serotonin, not only allowing your body to relax but also lowering your blood pressure! In other words, a smile is not only uplifting, it is also healing!

The wonderful thing is that the person receiving your smile experiences the same thing. What a gift to give another person! What would it be like if just for today you held the intention to meet your life with a smile?  In this world where there so much violence, disagreements, divisiveness, judgment and unkindness, you can make a huge difference, one person at time, with the power of a smile.