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Why You Should Smile at Strangers
They might smile back and a shared smile is a precious moment.
I had a pleasing revelation earlier today — there weren’t enough fingers on my hands to count the number of people who I shared a meaningful smile with when I was out doing my weekly quarantine grocery shopping. That means that I shared a smile with over ten people which, on a normal day in my hometown of Carlisle in England, would make me more than slightly paranoid that I had left the house without wiping toothpaste from my mouth.
It feels weirdly ironic that I am currently seeing and interacting with fewer people than I have done for most of my adult life due to this pandemic, yet I am connecting with more people than ever in a meaningful and authentic way through the simple act of sharing a smile.
A long time hobby of mine is smiling at strangers in the hope that they return the favor and a meaningful moment is shared, it now seems that everyone else in my town has joined me in my pass time. It’s a heart-warming feeling and it’s giving me the sense that I’m part of a community, which is something that I didn’t have before.
My sense of joy at this recent change is tempered with sadness — did it really have to take a pandemic for my local community to start smiling? It makes me wonder if this sense of community that I have recently found will continue on into the post-pandemic world.
There are smiles, and there are smiles. The kind that truly touches people come from an intentional act borne in kindness. The kind that we barely notice come from unconscious reflexes motivated by social etiquette. The latter kind of smile, the robotic one, doesn’t mean much at all. It doesn’t broker a connection between two people, it merely serves as a socially accepted way of recognizing that you have seen another human being. I am well used to receiving this kind of robotic smile, I would guess that most of you are too and I’m sure you’ll agree that it doesn’t have much of an impact on you when you receive one.
A true smile can do wondrous things to your mental health. I have several vivid memories of instances when I have been feeling low in mood, sitting on a bench in my town-center and stewing in negativity, only to be lifted out of my darkness…
