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Smile


It is a blessing to be able to smile after you have crossed over into that period of life which people would rather refer to with the help of some euphemism than plainly as ‘old age.’  When friends of the same age group counsel you condescendingly that “age is a matter of the mind,” you are free to smile.  Smile at the condescension.  Or you can smile at the hypocrisy.  Or self-delusion, if you wish to look at it that way.  You are free to smile when people choose to call it positive thinking.  And you can smile all the way as you drive to some Art of Living prayer session which will teach you avant-garde terminology for the senility that inevitably catches up with you.

The realisation that life is all the sound and fury that transpires between the wail that marks your arrival on the scene and the gasp that pushes you out can be an ideal source of smile.  The lessons that your near and dear ones tried to teach you in the countless scenes of the drama of life may deserve pretty much smiling.   The lessons in charity, for example, which were not quite charitable.  Green indignation over your jealousy.  Mocking chuckles about your cocking a snook at what failed to appeal to your snobbery.  Fiery sermons that scorch the lust that befriended your youth. 

Life is generous with opportunities for smiling.  Thomas Grey’s flowers that blush for you alone in the air of your willed solitude.  The country roads that stretch into welcoming twilights.  The smiles on the wayside, smiles not warped by pedantry or self-righteousness, not tainted by the city’s rat-race. 

There’s so much to smile at. 


PS: Inspired by Indispire Edition 86 : #YouMakeMeSmile
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