Smile, Smile, Smile

I don’t really do New Year Resolutions but one etched its way into my consciousness the other day. I was out at the beach with hard rain belting off my cheeks in the mad wind. I had my head down battling along and when I looked up I saw a parting in the clouds and all of a sudden the whole place lit up for a few moments to reveal a blue sea, golden sand, green fields, coppery cliffs …..

Nature was smiling warmly; that’s the only way I can describe it and it made me feel so good to be there to witness it.

Nature smiles warmly lots of the time. I know I don’t smile half enough BUT I’m determined to try and change that from here on in.

A Warm Smile from Co. Waterford.
A Warm Smile from Co. Waterford.

I’ve been thinking about all this for a few days now and these lines from Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s poem, Solitude, keep coming to mind:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.

I think there’s a lot of truth in them but it’s a truth that needs to be changed as we need to ensure that people know that they don’t have to put on pretend laughing masks or ever be alone whilst weeping, unless they want to be.

So, I’m all for the warm smile that says it’s fine to be YOU, no matter how you’re feeling.

Happy New Year to you all and may it be full of warm smiles!

 

 

Author: socialbridge

I am a sociologist and writer from Ireland. I have worked as a social researcher for 30 years and have had a lifelong passion for writing. My main research interests relate to health care and sense of place.

18 thoughts on “Smile, Smile, Smile”

  1. I can feel the warmth of your smile from where I am. It’s travelling through all the rain, grey, and wind, to infect my face with a smile, too.
    Wishing you many smiles and a song in your heart, Jean, throughout 2016.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: