Harkening back to my youth, I have my choice of both good and bad memories, and I come upon the image of the big mirror in the upstairs bathroom at Mom and Dad's, you could not avoid it if you tried. In that mirror I spent many hours contemplating (not hours at a time, many minutes that, over time, must add up to hours.) I would sit on the sink top (which was, and still is, pretty big) and stared at myself. I suppose it might seem a vain thing. But to know one's self, to understand that what you are looking at is in fact the reflected light bouncing back into your eyes. I move and my reflection follows. There is something that you cannot see, the thoughts of that other image (that is me), sure you can make faces and act a part, or act a fool, but it was hard to put the two together. I mean, it was hard to imagine what others saw, when they looked my way. Sure, the subjective look at the bad skin and curly hair. But what do others actually see? I am amazed to hear some friends surprised at any sort of compliment or admiration, perhaps they don't see it. Just as I could not, looking into that mirror.
I hear children, all the time, as I live in a house with five of them, and to want to hold up a mirror to them, or a recording of their voices, to show them as we see them. The yelling or whining, laughter or squeels of surprise or joy, the sound of distain and selfish (I, me, MINE!), I know that they do not hear it as we do. Twenty years from now, I know they will have grown, but when will they ever get to realize how they appear.
I decided to make the effort and smile this morning. Not a goofy or artificial smile, but a smile that comes from the realization of how good a life I have, despite any setbacks. I will coin it as 'the smile of Job'. The smile that Job had in his faith. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, I noticed the immediate response from strangers and classmates that it truely has an effect like smiling at one's self in the mirror. [I used to do this as what I thought was my own invention, "smile therapy" I'd call it. I come to read, years later, that in fact it is theraputic, at least when the smile becomes genuine. Sure, I'll start with a forced smile when I am 'not feelin' it', sometimes the worst is the best, as it is to look at the charicature of a smile that can make me smile. I can actually, and don't hold this against me, crack myself up. Laughing at my own inane thoughts and expressions.]
To only be able to cure disease this easily. A contagion of smiles. What more could I ask for.
...
- Mike Odd
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