Last week, I waxed eloquently (click here) (I hope you thought so!) on the benefit to your own health from smiling. But the other half of this reality is that a smile sends well-being to others. The gift of a smile is equivalent to, or greater than, handing someone a pep-pill or a vitamin. Sometimes it is the best medicine a sick soul can swallow.
Jesus calls us to “love one another”. A smile to the person in the car next to yours, waiting for the same light to turn green, is love. Love is not a feeling — it is an action. Love is giving to someone else an ingredient that lifts their spirits, enhances their health, improves their heartbeat. A smile is that kind of medicine.
A smile does not have to flow out of a happy heart. A smile can be generated or turned on by a personal decision, regardless of how opposite we may be feeling. Smiles can be generated even when we are feeling hurt, afraid, anxious or pre-occupied with a heavy assignment.
There are a lot of ways to give or show love — all efforts to encourage, motivate, heal, and inspire people who have been knocked down or stymied, are love. Love can be ‘showing up’, listening to another’s heartache, baking a cake or lending a dollar. But the one easy — and guaranteed — slice of love, possible for everybody, is sharing a smile.
Whether you feel like it or not, SMILE A LOT.