One of my personal strategies of the past year or so has been to look in the mirror first thing when I get up and flash a big, bright smile (no matter how tired or not bright and shiny I felt at the moment.) The reasoning behind this is that if I smile more, I might actually feel more . . . you know, happy. You are what you put out there, right? Except, according to this article on my new favorite blog of the past ten minutes, smiling may soothe those outside of you, but heal thyself? Not so much. Hmmm . . .
If you are not smiling the Duchenne way, i.e. smiling not just with your mouth but with your eyes, then supposedly you really aren't smiling at all. The article links to a "spot the fake smile" quiz. After reading the article I got 16 out of 20 right. I wonder if I would have done so well if I had taken the quiz first . . . How did you do? Somehow the surreality of taking this quiz brought back Michael Jackson's face-morphing Black or White video. Jackson also covered Charlie Chaplin's classic, Smile. Was Charlie Chaplin wrong? Should we not smile when our hearts are breaking?
The eyes, or at least the little crinkles around the corners that so many overpriced beauty products are trying to conceal, may indeed be the windows to the soul, an answer to how a person is feeling, to the truth behind that Mona Lisa smile. The eyes truly do have it . . .
0 comments:
Post a Comment