21 October 2012

week 43: They say it's better than chocolate

Wonder spawned in: Right now
Wondered into being by: You
Wonderspan: About 10 minutes (OK, a bit more again, sorry) plus a bit of your lunch break

Thank you for following the Monday morning wonders this far – there are only a few left before the end of the year.  Today's is a biggie with plenty of frilly extras at the end and, what's more, it's interactive too.

Today, if you’re game, wonder-lovers all over the world will be going out into the streets to carry out some important research together.  First, let’s set the scene.  It’s Monday morning and Joe Bloggs is on his or her androgynous way to work or school.  For reasons all of Joe’s own, he or she does something for just a few seconds which:
  • gives more pleasure and joy in the moment than does eating chocolate or being given a lot of money
  • reduces stress instantly and increases life expectancy
  • is highly contagious, causing others to benefit in similar ways to Joe
  • makes Joe look better and appear more competent and attractive (mmmm…)
  • costs nothing and takes no effort
  • and is the first of about 20 or more times (s)he will do this today.
So, what is the thing that Joe Bloggs does?  The answer, wonder-lovers, is smile.

The smile is this Monday's wonderful thing.  It's culturally universal, even among disparate peoples who have never made any contact with one another.  A warm smile signals feelings of joy and pleasure, while causing the same in not only the smiler but also the smiled-to.  It is a way for pleasure, love or joy to share itself around – a bag of soul-sweeties passed about to whomever happens to be nearby.

The benefits of smiling are many, not least in stimulating the pleasure centres of the brain.  Smiling evangelist Ron Gutman claims (rather implausibly but let’s say convincingly) that, in terms of how effectively smiling releases endorphins, just one high-quality smile is equivalent to eating 2,000 bars of chocolate or receiving £16,000 in cash.  Your smile also reduces stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.  Studies show that if you’re smiling for real then people will find you more beautiful.  (Whatever capitalism can sell you to make other people like you more – your fancy car, a cupboard full of make-up, a nip and a tuck, a cool office tie – none of this can substitute for just looking happy.)

Smiling even does a little bit – maybe a lot – to change the world, on account of its vectors of contagion.  When smiles are shared, good feeling becomes a social force, whose common existential 'yes’ might, perhaps, displace a little of the bitterness and resentment that is often expressed through violence.  It’s even very difficult for other people to frown at you when you’re smiling for real (although denying someone their freedom to dislike you can be understandably annoying for them, to the point of seeming unfair).

Ah but… surely we need to feel happy in order to smile for real, no?  No indeed.  There are fakes, of course, about which more in a moment, but pretending to smile is not the same as choosing to do it.  It’s just a matter, I think, of finding a part of yourself that wants to smile.  If you enjoy the time of the season, for example (and autumn is radiant at the moment) or you think it’s funny the way pigeons walk, then that might be grounds enough for a smile, even if you also have good reasons elsewhere to feel stressed or unhappy.  The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh is a great advocate of choosing to smile.  Even when you’re in pain of any kind, he says, try smiling into the pain just to see if that helps, for the smile might transform it (or compost it, as he suggests) into something useful and creative.  By choosing to smile you still enjoy its chocolaty charge; scientists tell us that if you successfully smile at will you’ll still stimulate the endorphins in your brain.

We don’t have to be melting with euphoria in order to smile genuinely – most of our smiles are gentle affairs, moments of quiet contentment in the rhythm of each day.  That said, if you really can’t find something to enjoy, choosing to smile is bound to be a tricky proposition.  There are about 14% of people who on any given Monday smile less than five times, says Ron Gutman, when as a child they would have filled each waking hour with 25 smiles.  I wonder what it is we lose from our childhood.  Kids smile because they’re excited about stuff, that’s all, so why do we become less excited as adults?  Is that necessary or just something we allow to happen?  Answers on a postcard.

What about those fake smiles, then?  It turns out we’re pretty good at doing them and we’re not so good at spotting them in others but – read on – I will tell you how.  The other day I did a test on the BBC website to see how good I was at spotting fake smiles and my performance was appalling, but I now have a couple of tricks up my sleeve which I don’t mind sharing with you.

There are two ways to tell a real smile from a forgery.  The first method is slightly weird but it works.  If someone smiles at you and it’s for real, you will feel yourself smile in turn; if it’s a fake, you won’t.  So if someone smiles at you and you feel yourself involuntarily smile back, then there’s a good chance they really mean it.  If you think, 'Ah, I suppose I'd better smile back' then the chances are they're faking it (although they might be faking it just to let you know they like you).  You can stop this method from working by putting a pencil across your mouth so you can't smile.  It’s then harder (so scientists say) to tell genuine from fake smiles because without the use of your mouth you've lost their natural smiling reflex.

The second way of telling if a smile is real is to look to see if their eyes are smiling.  In the 19th century, a chap called Duchenne hooked people’s faces up to wires and switched on the current.  It wasn't pretty but he did discover that genuine smiles engage muscles around the eyes – the obicularis occuli – which are very difficult to flex at will.  When a real smile (also called a Duchenne smile) puts this little muscle to use, skin around the eyes scrunches up; if you smile a lot you’ll get ‘crow’s feet’ wrinkles – the hallmark of a veteran smiler.  You can see this effect in this fellow, whose Job Description says, at the top, 'To smile at people and tug their beards with affection.'  He’s smiled so much that he has the fittest facial muscles in the world (probably). His face is so wrinkled with smile lines that it looks like a wet paper bag after a storm, but in a good way – the sort of way that makes you feel safe to give him a hug or let him carry your children across a precipice.

But then compare His Holiness with this chap and that chap.  It's obviously unfair to to compare the Dalai Lama with Tory politicians having a bad day, it's maybe even ghoulish, but there’s a lesson there somewhere.  Politicians of all Parties smile a lot but not many have crow's feet; what's wrong with this picture, wonder-lovers?

Aptly for a Monday wonder, the word ‘smile’ comes from the ancient Proto-Indo-European root smei, which also gave birth to the Latin word mirus, meaning ‘wonderful’ (the idea is, it seems, that you know a wonder by your own smile at beholding it).  Mirus also gives us 'miracle', which was originally held to be any sign or powerful event inspiring smiles of astonished wonder.  (The meaning of 'miracle' was not limited to an act of God; it could be anything worthy of wonder; 'worthy of wonder' is the meaning of the name Miranda, from the same root).  It's also noteworthy that the word 'to smile' in many languages was based on the word 'to laugh', such that a smile is deemed to be on a continuum with laughing, as a 'small laugh'.

Fascinating, I know, but let's move on and get to today’s way of loving.  Comrades: we act together today for the sake of our collective wellbeing as a species.  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to measure the extent of the world’s smile, right from your local street.  This is how to carry out your research...  Stand in one spot or walk about one area.  Look at people passing by.  Watch people.  For every person who's smiling, count a 1 on one side of your notebook/back of old tissue; for everyone who isn't, count a 1 on the other side.  If someone looks vacant don't lose heart; just smile to them and mean it and you'll feel better again; they might, too.  If you like, you can count shy smiles double, or lovers’ smiles half, or people smiling on their own five points – it’s up to you, just make sure it's not too scientific.  When you’re done, generate the Smile Quotient score for your area by dividing the number of smiling people by the total number of people you've looked at.  Report the SQ score and location, together with an explanation of your methods, in a comment on the blog or send it to me at justplaindavid@waysofloving.com.  I will add it to the Ways of Loving World Map so that the international community can take action accordingly.  (To see the world map, go to Google Maps and search for ‘ways of loving’.)  And by averaging the scores we can also create a SQ quotient for the entire world for the first time.  Be part of this pioneering endeavour.

I started us off yesterday in St Pancras Station.  I counted 500 people (I'm thorough), of which 56 were smiling; only one of the smilers was on his own at the time.  I managed to elicit a smile from one person by smiling to them with my obicularis occuli; I like to think we both benefited as we beamed at each other.  Anyway, 56/500 is 11.2%, which I think is probably quite low on the scale between zingzingzing at the top and totally vacant at the bottom - maybe about here.

To support you in this important work for worldwide wellbeing, I have created this smiling taxonomy:
  • Overwhelmed smile, combined with crying, nearly pulls your poor face apart, aches for hours afterwards then tingles as if new.
  • Pan Am smile, 100% genuine fake smile, characterised by pure indifference presented as affection, performed with aplomb by air hostesses on Pan Am flights in the 1980s, consumer-capitalism’s very own archetype.
  • Sensuous smile, half-formed, faltering as if interrupted, sometimes with shiver.
  • Embarrassed smile, like embarrassed laughter, nothing to do with pleasure or humour, just embarrassment, strictly speaking a grimace, not to be confused with a smile.
  • Smiling because you're in love: smile has conquered face and now creeps towards total domination of the whole body; indelible for the time being, sometimes mesmeric, persists during air raids and other calamities.
  • Ingratiating smile, usually comes to you overdone to burnt, for ‘Please like me’, ‘I’m harmless’, ‘I’m still your friend’, ‘Hello I’m a politician’, or all of the above.
  • Cruel smile, hedonistic, combines pleasure with sinister desire, sometimes collapses into sneer, ugly.
  • Easy smile, just because right now you feel happy/loved/free, 'Woke up this morning / Smiled at the rising sun / Three little birds / Right by my doorstep...'.
  • Imperial smile, the Queen's, the Pope's, The Emperor Ming's, often weary with the universe, sometimes on one side the face only while other side asks, ‘Why me?’
  • Just-about-to-fall-in-love smile, big smile, eyes wide with fear.
  • Triumphal smile, best with a roar.
  • Excited smile, children do it best and often, there's a Bollywood bhangra dancer inside your face, wide eyes ready to eat up whatever’s next.
  • Botox smile, a smile that’s been taken away.
  • Buddha smile, particularly free, existence is hilarious and you've stopped worrying.
  • Shy smile, wants to come over but isn’t sure it’s safe, a smile that locks itself up and peeps out the window just for you.
  • Volcano smile, though you do your best to stop it, it erupts all over your face.
  • Mannequin smile, affliction caused by surgically dragging folds of skin towards the back of the head and stitching them there for good.
  • Aura smile, surrounds people who have beautiful souls, who smile without even smiling.
Can you think of any more?

Thanks to Femi H for proposing smiles as a wonder for a Monday morning, and for telling me about the smile spies, which is where the smile-counting idea comes from.

Extra…

Here's a wonderful modern-day fairy tale about a smile, complete with cheesy ending:
This is what happens if you smile too much (this is amazing):
In suggesting her Monday wonder, Femi said we shouldn't forget crying either (perhaps especially in a society where you're allowed to laugh and smile and not really allowed to cry in public).  That reminded me of this Les Murray poem, 'An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow', which would be good to read out in Leicester Square, George Square, Times Square...
Here's Ron Gutman evangelising the smile:
And finally:
____________________
www.waysofloving.com

1 comment:

  1. I counted smiles in my tube carriage this evening. Of 36 people, 9 were smiling: 3 couples (lovely), my friend (big grin), me (inquisitive,amused with the world,sort of a smile, I think), one man alone (small reflective smile).

    What conclusions can you draw chief analyst?

    Data collected by Smiling Sunniva

    ReplyDelete

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