A smile...or is it something more than just that...

This week, someone read this remarkable quote to me:

He smiled understandingly–much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistable prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

This week I felt such a mixture of emotions from absolute annoyance of this silly apartment issue, to sadness that I had drifted from my old digs-mate to nervousness of having to tell my teacher I am bunking next week to go to China and absolute excitement and contentment with the resolution of finding, signing the contract and moving into my apartment! WHOOP WHOOP! A ball, a jumble, a mixture of shallow, trivial emotions that will fade...

But, I think this feeling of having someone smile so deeply and understandingly at you-just as Fitzgerald describes-is something so precious and dear that when it does happen, those feelings you experience have to be held close and near to you , because life can pass one by otherwise.

Imagine: Striving each day to achieve that smile with everyone you meet-lighting their lives with your beaming smile- giving people the sense of belonging and understanding, warmth and true love that are too seldom displayed in life...Is it possible? Or does it depend on the two people smiling at each other? or the timing? or the space people find themselves? or a million other antecedents that can cause that moment?

Or

should such a smile merely be a rare occurrence that we cherish for its extraordinariness....



Definitely a thought to ponder... refreshing in fact!