There is something beautiful about a person’s smile that appears every time they speak about something they love. That thing can be anything, from a dear one to the love of photography. As I’ve grown older, I have noticed not only the change of tone in a person’s voice but a change in smiles as well. It’s something similar to a person’s laugh, it changes depending on what they are laughing at.

Recently in one of my courses, my professor was speaking of her love of traveling and food. This is a professor I’ve had before and never has she failed us to tell us her travel stories. I quite enjoy them. She is very soft-spoken but strongly opinionated, she is warm, almost motherly I must say. She is the kind of teacher that every school needs. She was sitting down and telling us about a couple of her experiences while traveling. It was a regular summer day, and we were a bunch of kids just trying to cope with the heat that smothered us in the carpeted room.

She is just an ordinary teacher, but at that moment there was a light shining on her. As soon as the word “travel” rolled off her tongue a smile followed it. Not just any smile. Not the kind of smile where only half of your mouth travels upward, nor the kind of smile that you do out of courtesy. No, her smile was of a thousand suns. It was as if a halo hovered above her and shone sunlight on her face. It was a full smile, one where your teeth and gums show and your cheekbones can almost reach your eyelids. It was a beautiful smile. Perhaps to the rest of the class, it was ordinary, or perhaps they didn’t even notice. In it, I saw wonder and joy, the kind of youth that had long deceased from her body but was still alive in her heart. I could see her; a youth shining in that smile of hers as soon as she landed in a foreign country, having nothing but a pocket full of change and a heart full of love.

I took a mental photograph. If I were a true photographer, I would have quickly reacted, reaching for my camera and hoping the moment didn’t escape from my fingers. If by any chance her smile was still there and I managed to take a picture of it, it would be a token I would treasure. Even now, though I do not have a physical copy, I still look back to that moment. It gives me an inspiration of sorts, and something short of hope. Every time I think about I realize just how much of our heart simple things can take from us. It a sort of love that is indescribable, perhaps it’s something that could be compared to the love for another human being.

A poet once said “It’s important to have teachers who are not afraid to love what they love." I wonder if that poet saw the same thing I saw. . . a love that cannot be contained in the tiny space of our body and instead, oozes through to the outside world.