Member-only story
Smile. It Will Save Your Life.
The skin which defends my cheekbones from the outside world gently slid upwards, pulling against the features of my countenance that lay below, the cheeks and the mouth. Straining against my upper lip which had, through memory and practice, remained resolutely firm at all odds. Creases gathered at the corners of my eyes, as the lower lids curled upwards at the edges in a soft arc, to form a gentle squint. It felt uncomfortable, raising a smile not at a joke or a trick, nor a greeting or pleasure, merely smiling at life.
Smiling doesn’t come easy. As adults, we lose our ability to smile regularly, it becomes a feint vestige of our childhood selves. Children smile four hundred times a day, a happy adult just twenty-five and a sad adult much less. Smiling attracts other people and positive receptions, people who smile get better jobs, people who smile when they apologise are better received. People who smile live longer. Smiling is the secret to happiness.
Somewhere along life’s disquiet course, I forgot to smile. Gone. An inevitability of maturity perhaps, but an unchangeable fate? Never. Pacing down the street has become accompanied by a determined glare and intense work partnered with a frown. Gormless, mouth-breathing, thousand-yard stares are de rigueur for the millions trawling Facebook, Twitter and Candy Crush on their faceless, torrid, commutes. The world is…
