Isn’t it amazing how many different meanings a smile has? In
what situations do you smile the most?
The slight parting of the lips as they flatten out and
reveal your teeth, or not. We wear our smiles like jewellery, it’s often used
for costume and we only bring it out on occasion. A real smile.
Your smile speaks volumes because for every emotion or
circumstance there is a different smile. I think that we wear our hearts in our
smiles because no matter how much we try to control and lock away our emotions,
a smile reveals all. The smile that is wide and unconscious, revealing all of
the imperfections you find in it but as a gesture is entirely warming. The
smile that is pursed, tight-lipped, offered as a pleasantry in company you’re
not quite comfortable around but the lack of sincerity is so obvious, it is
reciprocated anyway. The smile that is dead in the eyes – as though paralysed
from the nose up, only your mouth smiles because this smile isn’t for you, it
is for other people to see that you are OK, the ‘don’t worry’ smile that we all
think we can pull off.
My favourite smile is the one for me. Head bowed slightly,
in thought about what is, what isn’t, what could be and all in its beauty. So engulfed
in thought and contemplation that the smile occurs long before I acknowledge it
but smile even wider when I do. The same smile that I pass on to people in the
street, as though it’s a game, with a faint hope that they will continue to
share theirs. The type of smile that makes your body warm. You can feel it
exercising your cheeks. The peak of your cheeks forming two bumps in your vision,
eyes glazed and bright. Your head follows the direction of the corners of your
mouth and rises ever so slightly so that the light catches your chin and nose
perfectly.
What a difference a smile makes.
