The Infectious Epidemic - SMILE

Every one of us would have received thousands or at least hundreds of forwarded emails about SMILE. All of it would have emphasised why we should smile or something about smile, but if you observe the people around, you may find it hard to locate a genuine smile. The SMILEs now are all tainted, expecting something of it or it would be a sarcastic smile or anything but not genuine. If you consider only the adults, I presume that only around 5-10% of people in the world genuinely smile. A boy smiles at a girl expecting that something would happen between them or a worker smiles at his boss to be in good terms with him. A person standing in the bus smiles at the one who is sitting hoping that person would share his seat. As I said, all smiles are not genuine. I guess it is not hard to recognize a genuine smile. One such smile is of a child, a baby or a toddler. I am telling you because I experienced it sometime back in a train. Yes! You read it correct. In a train. It’s weird how people learn from different things from experiences in different places. Anyways, we all were in the train station (we = fellow travellers) waiting for the train. The train was delayed by 20 mins. Oh Boy! It DOES happen here in the UK and it does happen quite frequently. I was talking about the train delays. Um…. as usual, I saw many people with their books/novels/newspaper reading or glancing act. It’s pretty unusual to see someone to read a 500 page novel standing on a platform. There was another set of young – mid aged people with the earphones of their MP3 players/ipods/radios/ whatever gadgets plugged to their ears. I was there with my book in hand ( which I have been reading only while travelling) and listening to the songs on my MP3 player. It is not unusual of me to do both things at the same time. Though I was meant to either read my novel or listen to songs, I wasn’t doing nothing. I was observing people around me. It was 5 mins for the train to arrive. I saw a woman with a beautiful toddler and his buggy rushing down the stairs to get into the train. The train had arrived now and people were getting into the train. The lady smiled at me and I understood she needed some help and I put her buggy in the train as she got into it with her kid. I got in after the lady and the doors were shut. She managed to get the only seat in the compartment next to an old couple and I had to stand. She unfolded the buggy and made her boy sleep in it. I was busy observing people. The baby was awake and was staring at me. It smiled at me and I smiled back, it smiled more. I started to smile more and make funny faces at the baby. I think it liked it and started smiling more and more. People around started to notice the conversation between me and the baby. They all added their bits to it. After a couple of minutes, the part of the compartment where I was all smiley and people were all smiling and talking to each other as if they knew each other for ages. The books, players were all out for a couple of mins and by that time I had to get down. I was thinking as I walk out of the train station that the genuine smile of the baby made the mood in the train light and lovely. That is the actual potential of the smile. I had read about it, now I had experienced it. A smile is definitely infectious and a genuine smile has amazing powers. Next time, genuinely smile at a stranger and let me know what happened???