Cheerful

“Why does your face look like this?” queries my four-year-old daughter a few times a day while forming her face into a copy of what she just saw on mine: now a crimped mouth and tense eyes; later a weak smile that seems to have no source; another day my jaw clenched in a grimace; frequently an all-over flaccid blankness. Her likenesses of my face are not flattering and I want to dismiss them. Surely she has me wrong. But I’ve seen her imitations of others and at four she has an uncanny ability to capture essences in face, voice, speech and gesture. I am only deluding myself if I pretend she knows not that which she imitates.

My daughter’s facial queries began after attending a Sunday School class about feelings. From the class she brought home a strip of paper with six expressive faces representing the feelings happy, sad, silly, mad, scared, and proud, along with a big red paperclip she can use to indicate which emotion she is feeling at any given time. And, she brought home the now-explicit understanding that expressions on our faces mean something.

So what is she to make of the odd looks on her mother’s face, none of which are captured in the six circles on her feelings card? They didn’t teach her bored, concentrating, exasperated, surly. Maybe they ran out of space on the card. Maybe they thought these a bit beyond, and maybe too dark for, the needs of a four-year-old. But now she is curious. Now I have to give account of my face.

Seven days pass and I am sitting in the sustaining, breathy quiet of a Quaker Meeting and meditating upon words of George Fox, one of the earliest Quakers, who is known to have advised his fellow religious seekers: …walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one. I’ve chosen my seat with the express purpose of being able to see the poster in our Meetinghouse bearing this quote. Most weeks I concentrate on answering that of God in every one. It is enough of a challenge to live with. As one Friend observed this Sunday “it seems so easy sitting here in Meeting, but then, confronted midweek with one of God’s very needy children, I can feel my heart contracting, shrinking, tightening into a closed knot, and it takes all my concentration to try to keep it open.” He spoke for me, too, with that confession. So week upon week I return to that simple challenge: answering that of God in every one.

This week it is the first half of the phrase that captures my meditations: walk cheerfully over the world. Cheerfully? Cheerfully! It rings like an accusation struck too close to the sweet spot, reverberating still, 350 years after Fox penned it. Here is another practice to engage, for my daughter has so clearly revealed to me the lack of cheerfulness in my unguarded face.

After some minutes of grumping, of concentrating very hard on praying for the Meeting and the individuals in it, I find my shoulders hunched and teeth clenched tight. My dental hygienist says I must clench my teeth a lot. She sees calcification around my gums. Not healthy. I breathe deeply and begin my worship, my prayer, my meditation again. I have heard some Buddhists practice what they call the “half-smile,” a practice of setting ones resting face into a gently smiling expression. I decide to try it. Breathing in I watch my breath, breathing out, I smile. In. Out. Breathe. Smile.

Outside, the weather is mercurial, swinging from dark gray rain, wind and thunder to bright golden sunshine lighting up autumn leaves, wind blowing the tiny locust tree leaves horizontally past the window so I feel as if I am in the midst of a sun-yellow snow storm. The sky’s mood swings back and forth from gray to golden four or five times in the hour of worship. I half-smile through it all. I half-smile when people speak the messages they have heard in the quiet. I half-smile through the quiet. My own mood, gray-blue at the beginning of the hour, is golden and glowing by the end. I look upon everyone with smiling eyes and seeing God in them is so very easy. For now.

All week long, as often as I remember, I practice the half-smile. It must be a dozen times a day that I remember, which means I have also forgotten as many times. By evening the muscles of my cheekbones are sore, as though I have been at a too-good party and laughed for hours. Muscles get sore when they’ve had a work out. It is a satisfying feeling, knowing they are getting stronger and someday I will be able to smile all day with little effort.

***

Experts in diverse fields, I was surprised to learn, have spent years studying the transformative effect of smiling. They have formed theories to explain just why a smile emanating from choice, as opposed to one emanating from native mood, would cause a genuine change in mood.

For example: French physiologist Dr. Israel Waynbaum used facial bio-feedback to detect chemical changes in our brains when we smile and when we frown. He found that frowning triggers the release of the stress hormones cortisol, adrenalin and noradrenalin which increase blood-pressure, weaken the immune system and increase susceptibility to depression and anxiety. Smiling, on the other hand, reduces these chemicals and releases endorphins and immune-boosting T-cells. Ahh, endorphins, those little happy chemicals released in our bodies by so many things: exercise, sex, sunlight, chocolate, and now, smiling.

For example: Dr. Robert Zajonc has found that cooler facial temperatures lead to better moods. Making the sound “eeeeee,” holding a pencil between your teeth, wearing one of those bandage-looking things over the nose that athletes and snorers use, and smiling can all boost your mood because they all open air passages in the nose and therefore cool us down.

For example: Doctoral students in Psychology LeeAnne Harker and Dacher Keltner have studied yearbook photos. Yes, yearbook photos. They discovered that people with smiles that involved their eyes – genuine smiles, smiles that can’t be faked – have happier, more successful lives in the long run than those with only lip-deep smiles. The teenage suspicion that these one-inch-square pictures are of ultimate importance turns out to be true. Do your eyes smile? Do mine?

For example: Anyone will tell you they would rather be around someone who smiles than someone who doesn’t. The smile is more contagious than even a yawn another researcher says. We want the warmth of someone’s smile to shine upon us. We want to glow with such warmth from the core of our own being.

***

I decide to learn more about the Buddhist smiling practice. Revered Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh recommends this meditation for beginning and seasoned mediators alike:

Breathing in, I calm my body.

Breathing out, I smile.

Dwelling in the present moment

I know this is a wonderful moment.

I practice breathing and smiling for ten days. Every time I notice a drab look or a frown coming to my face I decide to try to smile. I am amazed at how suddenly the sun comes out to shine on my world when I do this. Extending the smile into my eyes actually changes what my eyes see. Maybe I’m just laughing at myself, at the silliness of my face, of this practice, but the reason for whatever grayness I felt before eludes me. Being cheerful, the whole world looks like God. I see and hear God everywhere. I answer God in everyone. Almost everyone.

And then it all crashes in. The sky clouds over. I am snarling, impatient and tired. My spouse goes out of town for two days. Try as I might I cannot force a half-smile to my face. The idea sounds ridiculous to me. I am anything but calm in my body. There is nothing, (absolutely nothing, do you hear me?) wonderful about this moment.

Smiling is such a simple practice, and so, so difficult. This must be why it is called a “practice.” This must be why Thich Nhat Hanh says it is a good practice even for the most advanced practitioner: so basic and so hard. Again and again I have to remember that practice is not about doing perfectly at all times. Practice is about remembering and returning again and again. Returning again to the breath. Remembering again to the smile, no matter how ridiculous it seems.

After two days without a smile I am back at Quaker Meeting listening for some spirit to speak to me, waiting for some light to warm my soul, and I am trying, again, to smile. By the end of the hour something in my heart is still sore, but healing has begun, just a little bit, and tears of gratitude and love wet my cheeks.

***

“Why does your face look like this,” queries my daughter again, forming her face into an odd little grin. I am relieved she is interested in understanding the happy looks, too, not just the pinched and angry ones. But she senses there is something not quite genuine about my chosen smile. Perhaps it is only lip deep today, has not spread yet to my eyes, to my heart.

If she would let me I would cup her apple-pink cheeks in my hands and reply: Sweet girl, I am smiling because life is good and you are a delight and the earth is more beautiful than my soul can contain. I am smiling because I see God in you and in me and in Daddy (atheist though he is). I am smiling because everything glows with golden light.

Some days my smile really means that. When my eyes are smiling that is what they are saying. But she never asks then. On those days she knows. The glow embraces her. When she asks on these lip-deep smile days, the honest answer most often is this: My face looks this because I am trying, I am really trying, to walk cheerfully over the world. Sometimes trying is all I can do. Sometimes trying is all any of us can do. And trying is enough.