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Home  Articles Latest Smile – it might never happen
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Smile – it might never happen |
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The other day, when I was having a majorly awful day – two children with sickness and diarrhoea, an ill husband who was ‘fine’, another child having permanent tantrums, I was just getting over illness myself – someone smiled at me.
Not much really, just a friendly smile from a friendly but strange face. My whole day lit up and I was able to enjoy the last few hours of it. All from a chance and brief meeting in a supermarket carpark. It got me thinking. How often do people actually smile at each other, how often do I smile at people? This morning, as I stared fairly rudely at a passer-by, it remembered the smile I had received again and felt bad....what if that passer-by was looking a bit mis because she was having a crap day like I had had? So, I resolve to smile more often in 2007. But apart from my resolution, another train of thought was started. How many of us actually take in the ‘real world’ these days? I constantly see people chatting in their mobile phones whilst paying at the check out, or sitting on the train with earphones in, blank faced. How many evenings are spent chatting on the net or playing some electronic game-for-one? Even though I try hard, my phone rings at bad times....if my boss phones my mobile when I am paying at the supermarket, do I pick up? And then what? Do I say, phone again in five minutes, or do I ignore the fact that I am supposed to be communicating with a real flesh and blood human in the form of the check out person? And the chatting online, yes, I’m terrible, I admit! But I am a chatter and always have been and it doesn’t affect my ‘real’ interactions with people, in fact, I think it enhances it. But there are people who do nothing else, who aren’t aware that the other chatter is a human with feelings. These people also don’t interact much with their surroundings (from the people I know, at least). How many of us hear the sounds of nature when our ears are stuffed with deaf-aid-MP5-thingies (to mix two generations of confusion, my father and my daughter!)? How many of us scowl at strangers because we are wrapped up in an online argument? How many of us cut short a conversation to answer a mobile phone? I know I am guilty...and I know that I use all these things less than other people. Anyone want to sign up with me to smile more and to take more part in the world around them? I’m starting today and will encourage the rest of my family to join in! |
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