It’s strange, isn’t it? You’re walking to class, inside the mall, or down the aisles of a grocery store. And when you look up from thinking about your upcoming test, what shirt you’re going to buy, or how much the blueberry muffins will be today, you accidentally make eye contact with a stranger.
For a second, if that. And then you quickly, quietly, promptly look away.
It’s instinct to us now—to turn away if we make eye contact with someone we don’t know, to veer away from something that culture has deemed as awkward and uncomfortable.
But why? Why can’t the norm be to smile when this happens, to open a conversation, or to invite them into your day, even if that’s just with a simple “hello” or a “Hey, man, how are you?”
Why can’t we be the person that smiles?
More importantly, why can’t we be the person that smiles back?
We live in a world where people crave attention, friendship, love, and acceptance. We long to fit in, to be encouraged, and to strive to better things, especially when it’s with other people. A part of being human is to crave interaction with others, no matter how big
No matter how insignificant.
So be the person that smiles. Encourage interaction, invite them in, open yourself up beyond the walls of your phone and the destination ahead of you. Instead of keeping your head down, or pretending to be on your phone when walking past someone, tilt your head up, put on your brightest grin, and spread a piece of joy to someone else. How lucky would you be to create a chain reaction? A line of smiles that you started, simply because you decided to change the game, to make that difference. Imagine you’re walking on campus, and you smile at a man in blue jeans. And then blue jeans feels like smiling to a guy in a red coat, and then red coat smiles at a girl with black hair. And then she smiles at a teacher, who decides to smile at the mailman, who decides to smile at the old man at the grocery store, whose day has just been made whole because someone was brave enough to stitch it back together.
And this could start with you.
We’re always told that we don’t know what one smile could do for someone’s day, or how big a change it might bring to their afternoon. We’re supposed to communicate, we’re supposed to constantly interact. So why is it so hard for us to do?
And the funny thing is, we know that we should smile. We know that we should look up, engage, interact. That’s why we feel uncomfortable when we don’t. It’s not making eye contact with a stranger that’s awkward. It’s the fact that we look away and pretend that it didn’t happen.
It’s why, when you’re sitting on a bus, or at a table in a new class and everyone is avoiding eye contact, you realize that silence actually has a sound.
And that it’s really, really loud.
So be the person that smiles back. Invite kindness in. And then take it, breathe it in, and drizzle it out into the world. Let your smiles pour into something bigger, greater. Don’t just smile, do things that will cause others to smile too! You can pay for someone else’s order in the drive-thru line, pick up that trash on the side of the street, or stuff treats in your friend’s mailboxes so that no matter how long a week they’ve had, they’ll still be coming home to love at the end of the day.
Do you want to know what all those things is going to make someone do?
It’s going to make them smile. Really, really big.
So be the person that smiles. Be the person that smiles back.
Because once you start, once you get into that pattern, you won’t be able to stop.
And imagine what kind of light you’ll be spreading.
Believe me, it’ll be pretty bright.
