Follow D's Lead and SMILE

My Student-Friend suggests we SMILE

I love this piece. It is music to my ears…And those who know me I love my music. I appreciate every word that my student-friend has written below. So heed to his message…SMILE…SMILE…and SMILE again. It will alter your perspective of the world. Remember: Dogs bark, Donkeys bray, wolves howl, whips whine…but humans smile… My Student-friend, I love your smile…So keep on smiling…On the radio it started playing Boatmen of Volga (just coincidence…! It is UCLA radio station) …I love it…Listen to it today and smile. H. K.

A recent experience taught me something very simple yet very interesting. Let me tell you what this experience was... for some random reason a tooth did not grow straight up and got stuck in my lower jaw, I had surgery done on it to get it removed... It was successful. I stayed home from school for a couple of days to rest and let my mouth relax. 

Now, what did this teach me? While I was at home pressing ice to my face that pretty much doubled in size, I realized I wasn't feeling too happy. People might say that it's because I just had surgery, but I think not. I was quite happy that I had the surgery because this tooth had a chance of leading to cancer in the future, so there's nothing to be sad about there... I thought about it a bit and I realized that I couldn't give a friendly grin, forget about a full out smile. I believe this is why I was dealing with this depression. After the couple of days of rest, I finally got back to going to school and interestingly enough the first thing that I did was smile. Even though my mouth was not fully healed and it hurt quite a bit to smile I still smiled. So really this experience taught me two things... One, that smiling is way more important than you think... and Two that being able to see friends and colleagues will bring a smile to my face even though it may hurt :D 

Smiling is something that everyone does but something that everyone does not think about. Let me elaborate... I can guarantee that YOU, the person reading this, don't really notice when you smile and you don't know what impact your smile has on others because of that. Smiling is a beautiful thing that brings light to any boring unsettling situation. For example, walking through the halls with a smile on your face will make that experience that much greater, people will look at you and judge you, but judge in a good way... and that... somewhere down the road will come back and bring you more happiness than you think. 

While writing these couple of words, I realized another interesting point about smiling... how it can actually be a negative thing. For example, when making fun of someone, you are smiling, but in a terrible way... and I think we can all agree that somewhere down that road will bring you much shame and disappointment. And a quick note to people that are being made fun of...keep smiling, good things will come, let those "hallway" kids rot...

I don't know if I explained this in a good way, but it sounded good in my head and I wanted to share it. I hope you get the point...

Embrace smiling and use it for good... not evil... It will make you happier and more importantly the world (that is in so much distress) a better and more inviting place to live.

:D

D, You are very special and I am so lucky that I met you…in my classroom…in the hallways. You indeed enriched my life and reading you smile…made my day. Thank you. H.K.