White blood and soldiers of peace

Please read this with a smile on your lips.

You may be in bad mood having argued with your husband or boyfriend. You may have been struggling to find the dress you are looking for in your messed up wardrobe. You might even be running around the house to meet multiple assignments to manage children and your presentation still not finalized. Wait, please do all this with a smile! It won’t disturb your schedule in any way. It’s a humble request like I ask you to take a harmless sip of water even if you don’t feel thirsty at the moment. A reasonless smile can be taken as simply as you merely take a sip of water.

Did it? Now please be honest and tell the relief it got you. A smile to the self, without any calculation, without any reason, without any expectance of results and rewards, miraculously makes you feel better. Instantly! Isn’t it wonderful? Do it and you know instantly what I mean. It’s like a corner of dark cloud on an overcast, freezing day parts and a life-soaked shaft of light falls over you, transporting you to blanketfuls of warmth and solace.         

Laughter is the best medicine, they say. Laugh to the capacity of your guts, but please don’t underestimate a smile. In strange ways it’s is therapeutic to the ever-wheezing, fretting and fuming brain machinery. It simply, without any exuberance and pretentions, releases tension and stress from the whirring machine that your brain is. It’s a coolant like you have in your car engine to stop it from burning red with fury.

Hush away your neutral face expression. Being expressionless is as good as bearing a wooden head. You can smile even when you don’t have to. It is contagious. Other cells in the body cascade down the message of well-being. It’s such a positive force. Smile is not just a cute expression around the lips of a cool person. It carries a healthy dose of happiness. Just curve your lips wherever you are right now, be it driving, walking back home after a stressful day in office, sitting alone in a cafeteria over a mug of coffee, jostling in a crowded metro, tucked in your bed, watching your favorite programme  on TV or talking to somebody. And you instantly get your medicine to be better. For free, girls! Grab it.

Quite wonderfully, you need not have a reason to smile. As the muscles around the corners of your lips get into an imperceptible crease taking your cheeks for a delicate contortion to make you look still better, you immediately feel a release of anxiety and stress from the heated chamber that our brain is. Simple fact is: when you smile, even when just doing it out of simple aloofness like somebody told you to have one more sip of water even if you aren’t thirsty, you let loose a healthy trail of endorphins into your blood. This chemical is a carrier of happiness. It’s as much potent, happy and healthy you feel while running.

If you carry the molecules of smile around your lips, it sends out positive vibes about your personality, that you are happy and firmly in saddle and in control of your life. It helps in interpersonal relations. It oils your professional pursuits. There are too many rivals in this unsparing competitive world. With a face inclined to smile, you will have some less rivals head-butting you in the game that life is. More importantly, every face in the world is incomplete without a smile. Even the most beautiful face can still go a notch higher with a smile.  

Ok, accepted that you are darn attractive and you take good care of yourself. You wear stylish clothes, have matte foundation, lip gloss and eye liner in the safest reach to support your charm. Wait, there is something freely available that can instantly take you to be the most adorable princess around. Just elongate your lips horizontally, very softly, allowing your cute cheeks to delicately undulate. It’s a smile lady! It’s the best tool on your dressing table. No beauty is perfect without a smile.

Apart from the glowing star that you become with a smile, the symbolic derivates are even more important. You look caring, empathetic, trustworthy, better leader, dependable companion and easy going. Apart from the glorious take-aways mentioned above, a smile increases white blood cells which make you stronger. Hidden inside your soft, considerate and caring persona topped with a smile, you become a strong and confident persona inside. A smile just digs the foundations of your firmness physically and mentally. It goes deeper and deeper.

Have a frown on your face and see the results. Even the liftman won’t salute with enthusiasm. Well before it oils someone’s insecurity, it harms your own system by increasing the toxics which generate stress and anxiety. With a smile you are more approachable and sociable. And opportunities have this tendency, like water has of flowing down to the lower levels, to rush after such persons.

The people in the world might be banging and clattering to beat and surpass each other for self aggrandizement. But still a cute soldier shielding his face with a smile instead of the iron mask of fretting rigidity and grimace is more welcome. This world will still be competitive but it won’t be a bloody fight and broken teeth and broken bonds. It will be a pleasant game. It will be beyond winning and losing. It will just be. Try this in office, at home, in trains. Just smile to yourself. Simple! It’s a cozy, comfortable bulb that you light up. After dispelling the gloom from some corner of your soul, it will spread into the shady zones into the beings of those around you. And they need it. This tiny flicker emanating from you can become a beacon of hope for someone who needs it.  

Forget the awkwardness and tension that strikes you due to the challenges thrown by situations. You might be waiting for your interview, your heart beating violently. You might be terribly inclined to lose it because the queue in bank isn’t moving. A frown will not make things go easy for you. But a smile can. Try this now. You will feel the effect.

For a change do something without any logic. Just smile!