Count Your Blessings #55 – Seeing a Smile

Is anyone’s life ever “a bed of roses”, I don’t think mine ever is. Having said that, I’m not sure I understand the phrase, it’s one that I have used all my life, but I’m not sure I would ever really want to lie down on a load of roses, especially ones with the thorns still attached. As the phrase comes from a poem I’m assuming they are talking about something more akin to a bed of rose petals, but perhaps I’ve completely missed the point.

Anyway, life isn’t “a bed of roses” it has its moments, but normally life has its highs and lows. In the middle of a high or a low seeing a smile is fantastic thing.

There’s an Irish saying which goes like this: “It is easy to be pleasant when life flows by like a song, but the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with years, and the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears.”

When I was little someone once said something similar to this to me: “A smile is worth a million pounds, but costs nothing”. It’s stuck with me through the years.

Job said this, speaking from a place of desperation and commenting on how people’s attitude to him had changed: “When I smiled at them, they could hardly believe it; their faces lit up, their troubles took wing!”

There are thousands of quotations about a smile. The last one from me for now comes from William Shakespeare’s Othello: “The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.”

A smile is clearly a very powerful thing. They cost nothing. There is no limit on their use. The government doesn’t tax their use. They don’t require any special training or even a weekly work-out. Smiling takes some effort on our behalf, but not that much.

Smiles are also infectious, how many times do we give someone a smile and not get one in return? How many of you looked at the picture of Emily smiling in the snow and didn’t smile yourself?

Go on give a smile today and make someone’s day.

Knowing that you have made someone smile is a double blessing. I’ve recently had a number of people contact me saying how Jimmy and Grandad have made them smile. These comments come from all sorts of people in all sorts of places around the globe and that just makes the feeling better.

At the end of a business meeting someone smiled at me an thanked me for the smiles that these little wooden dolls had given them. It was a bit of a surreal experience where my work life and my private life intersected in a way I hadn’t expected.

Get over there and have a look, it will make you smile.