Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella (Song Lyric)
A smile that reaches your eyes is a smile that isn't hiding anything. At least that's the idea. Most of us were taught early that you offer up a smile to stay polite, to keep from bruising someone's feelings, to avoid looking cold. And when we do that, the smile usually stops at the lips. The rest of the face sits there unchanged. So ask yourself: when you smile, does the whole face join in? Do you actually light up, or do you just arrange your mouth?
Denial is a daily habit for a lot of people. We'll insist we're happy, or claim we're not angry, when the opposite is true. Somewhere along the line we got coached into this. I run into plenty of people wearing tired, sad, defeated expressions, and when I point it out, they wave it off and deny anything's wrong. I keep wondering who they imagine they're fooling. Maybe they genuinely believe their real feelings aren't leaking out all over their face.
Kids are honest to a fault. They notice what's in front of them and they'll say it plainly, right up until they get schooled in manners and learn to shade the truth about what they feel and see and think. So here's a question about yourself. How often are you congruent? Meaning, how often does the look on your face and the way you hold your body actually match whatever you claim to be feeling inside, or feeling toward another person?
And how often do any of us really meet someone's eyes and register what's sitting there? We start masking the real thing in childhood. Worse, we come down on other people for being honest, children especially, when they say or do what they actually feel.
A face that moves tells you a person is interested, and it backs up the words coming out of their mouth. When someone's face stays flat while they swear they're involved and engaged, how often does anybody say something about the mismatch? Mostly we let it slide.
Drop the polite pretense and the small white lies, and people tend to decide you're being childish, not adult. The irony is that you've actually grown up by then. You're the one dealing with what's real.