Smile

I walked out of my dance class with my muscles screaming. The next batch was waiting to be called in. A bunch of six year olds. And they were all smiling. At me. Then they said “Hi!”. I was surprised, very pleasantly surprised. You don’t get to smile and say Hi to strangers when you are an adult. Or even when you are entering your teens.

Now why is that, I wonder. Fear of rejection? What if the other person does not smile back? Or worse, smirks and makes a nasty comment?
Imagine you are in your office, with more than a hundred people on your floor. And you don’t know any of them, save a select few. Then a really funny thing happens when you are around. Maybe one person lands on her rocker one day, and she smiles at you and laughs at herself. You exchange names, start talking. And become good friends. Then you may wonder, why didn’t I meet her before? What if she had not fallen off, we still would pass by each other with stony faces!!

How easy it is to meet people when you are young. To throw all your cares into the wind and just smile at the other person because you are comfortable in your skin, and because its great to be alive. We must borrow from the enthusiasm of the tots. And make sure that they don’t lose it as they grow up. Smile at someone, and mean it. Not a distracted smile. A “its great to meet you” kind of Hi. Live in the moment. Cause as they say, you don’t know who’s falling in love with your smile!

So I greet everyone in my class with a loud “Hi” and force them to remember my name by asking them that at every class. Maybe a little on the pestering side, but hey, it works! So go out there, and smile at the people you meet, just like the tots who greeted me after my class.

The world awaits.