The smile you give is the smile you get back!They say a baby smiles an average of seventy-two times a day, and a toddler laughs or smiles six hundred times a day. We learn to smile very early in life. It is one of the first things we do, after we learn to cry. And how do we learn to smile? By how much we are smiled at. Does our smile live somewhere in the double helix of our DNA, or is it nurtured?
Somewhere in there lies the truth, which is – it is nature, but it must be nurtured. TO understand our mother’s smile is to understand our own smile, to know what triggers that physiological response.
A smile is an indication of a happy heart, and when you smile it changes your perception. It can create a better day. As frivolous as it might sound, studies have proven that even if you don’t feel like smiling, if you force yourself to smile, you will change your state of mind. By doing so, you can actually raise the immune system boosters in your blood. The question is, where does that smile go? Why is it that as we grow older we smile less? Could it be that we are looking for happiness and fulfillment in all the wrong places? Is it fear that stops us from being happy? Have we forgotten how to seek those simple pleasures that brought us such joy as children? To find the spaces between our thoughts that allow these joyful memories to flood back?
I suppose the key to holding on to that smile is to try to remember how much you smiled when you were young. Never forget, because that smile still lives in you, no matter how old you are.
