Smile, and the world …

So this afternoon, I am walking up the street, convinced I needed to walk the dog, buy red cabbage, get a coffee and have a break. Turns out the real reason I was walking was to smile at someone.

An older gentleman was walking towards me, head up, eyes front, and as we got closer I smiled at him and said 'Hello'. He replied, 'What a lovely smile, thank you.' Wow!

Maybe I was the only person who had smiled at him that day, or perhaps the only person who spoke to him. It is easy to get sad about this exchange, but we really should be happy – happy that such a small thing can make such a difference. That all we have to do is smile to make someone's day. Because smiling on the outside makes you smile on the inside. Without getting all existential (which is not my thing), maybe we should just smile more often because it makes other people happy and maybe makes us happy too. Try it sometime, even if no-one is watching.