When happiness is a hazard

It happened again today. It hasn’t happened in a while, so I shouldn’t take it so hard. Last time was on a Toronto streetcar, when they spoke as if I were not close enough to hear them. It’s usually different if it happens on the street, because then my meaning is clear.

Thing is, I can’t help but smile at couples who look happy together. But not just any happy: I can keep the smile to myself if they show off their happiness with overt PDAs(Personal Displays of Affection). When only one has that directly-from-happiness-inside smile, I can simply smile with my eyes, never to be noticed. Couples who are walking and talking will certainly get my attention, but show me a couple enjoying talking to each other, or couples smiling stupidly as they walk hand in hand, and I’m a gonner.  I have to smile right out loud. A great stupid grin. I’m into the hormone high that comes with rememberences of being that couple walking together looking happy for all the world to see, and I feel the much more profound appreciation for being part of a happy couple. Mine is an: I can totally relate to your happy-couple-ness-‘cause-I’ve -got-mine-covered smile.

These smiles have proven problematic.  Unless it’s the right place and right time and place,  those I am grinning about – who are also those I am grinning at – don’t know what to make of this. When I get caught in a grin, it can get right uncomfortable. For both parties. And usually all three.  Like a ciyoke if nighs ago: driving home at dusk, stopped at a red light.  They were crossing the street. I saw her. Looking at him, and beaming with happiness. He too was smiling, although looking straight ahead. As I was checking to see if they were holding hands, I saw her start to say something to him. When I looked up (yes, they were holding hands), they were almost across the street, and he was craning his neck to look back at me with  the  expression of someone thankful that the crazed person his girlfriend asked him to check out was at a safe distance, and captive in a car.  That was over in the space of a red light. The afore-mentioned streetcar ride was more painful, sitting across from the smiling couple who fit my criteria.  I grinned. They stopped smiling. Gave each other a look. “Do you think that woman just smiles all the time?” puzzled he with no effort to lower his voice. For a moment I thought I’d do just that. What the hell. They’d already made their judgement. Came to their conclusion. But then, smiling when you don’t feel like it is a real chore and becomes a grotesque mask of glassy eyes and twitches. So I stopped smiling. But, not to be intimidated into looking away, I replaced the smile with my best look of subtle disdain-bordering-on-disgust ‘You fools. You didn’t deserve my smile’. Their (possibly understandable) reaction still had the power to sting.

Back in the days when I was an on-camera entertainment reporter, when in public, I kept a pleasant, quasi- smile playing about my face at all times. That’s partly because I was regularly recognized, and wanted to be prepared to be approachable. And because, when I didn’t smile, I regularly got asked ‘what’s wrong’ even when everything is alright.

I remember, in my dating days, beaming that early being-in-love smile, as I walked up Yonge Street arm in arm, happily talking with the guy at my side, thrilling at people smiling at our happiness. And think of how he said, puffed up with pride: “Everyone wants what we have.”

What’s happened to a smile as human contact? I think the times have forced a change of meaning on a smile. A random smile means someone isn’t in control of their inner thoughts; or it’s someone so simple they think small things are smile-worthy. Is a smile a sign of someone fooling themselves that they’re happy, when there’s so much to gloom about.  Or, is a smiler someone in their own world, smiling about who knows what. I mourn the loss of a smile as acknowledgement that we’re fellow humans on this walk of life.  I say: down with the dour doubting deniers: bring on the silly sunny smilers.

Kathy Kastner is the editor of Ability4Life.com, for adult children caring for their parents, and is very involved in patient-centered education, and its many interpretations. She is also a CareToKnow.org community member.

More of Kathy's recent blog posts:

Lost in Translation?
Walk for a Cure: When my daughter asked me to join her, why didn't I just say yes?
Father Kate and the un-anticipated aspects of community involvement
New Guest Blogger: What was said, and what we hear