Fortune
Smile is the safest place to hide sadness, according to the wisdom of the internet, and new trends in psychology counteract that – ostensibly, throw away your pink glasses and don’t avoid feeling bad emotions and expressing them.
Well, to whom how. I like the smile and the pink glasses most of the time – somehow it automatically happens that smile comes out even in the sad or bad moment.
Pink glasses and a smile do not mean that you are empty or superficial, that you close bad emotions and swallow them without chewing. You see and feel everything, and maybe even deeper than those faces marked with the mask of suffering and wisdom, only you don’t charge your burden to others.
And you feel all emotions, chew them – that is, understand, justify, and then swallow – accept them. Or you let them go of yourself – yes, through a smile.
For example, in the face of fear, I often find myself laughing, maybe hysterical, you say. But somehow it helps to amortize my fears – so, I do not offend this laugh and do not put labels to it.
So don’t be fooled into seeing a smiling man – that doesn’t mean drafts are raging in his mind, and naive furry pink kittens are playing in the soul.
It means one: a smile is his gun, his shield. Before anything you want – rain, routine, sadness, fears, infidelity, the foolishness of yourself and others, deceit, all kinds of injustice, eventually death…
© Fortune, 2009
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Do you agree that a smile can be as a gun sometimes?
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Yes
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No
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It is impossible to know what a person is thinking…I generally sense something by the way they use language, the tone of voice or just gut feeling.
I do agree. But, I also believe that I can tell the difference. Not just by listening but by looking. To exaggerate, it is like the difference between a smile and a grimace. Maybe it is micro-expressions – I have always just noticed that the face is wrong somehow. Anyway, I discount the smile significantly if it is just polite or fake.
I know many people use smiles to hide their real feelings and there can be all kinds of smiles from sincere to even lying smiles. If I want to know if a person’s smile is genuine I look in their eyes.
I have learned to smile a lot in my later years because I find it a good way of touching people.
Sorry – I really don’t understand what you mean. Smiles are good, guns are always bad – how can one be the other?
Many of us hide behind our smiles.