Streams of Life (5)
---Squeeze Out a Smile For Yourself
There are always some moments in my life that sadness suddenly gets hold of me,
casting a gloomy hue in my everyday activities. I used to choose not to be bothered, just letting my downcast mood be. I would allow myself to be influenced by
the vicious demon, seeing it hopelessly ruin my life. But wasn’t I supposed to
do something about it, other than to accept it passively?
The other day I told my friend about it. I said I couldn’t take control of my mood from time to time. Gloomy mood was off and on, keeping harping on me and messing up my life. He was bewildered to hear that. “ Aren’t you supposed to be your own master irrespective of any outer attributes, are you sure that you have
tried hard enough so as to get rid of those downside moments?” He put his puzzlement straight on my face.
Let me think. The very last time I was bothered by depression coming out of the
blue was only a couple of days ago. Probably due to lack of sound sleep the day
before, I felt extremely listless and tired when I got up in the morning. I began to feel my life was awful. Following that, everything happened later on just kept getting off the track: My bicycle was broken when I rode it to the school, in the classroom my usual seat was occupied by a rash guy, and at lunchtime my clothes was oil-stained because of the passer-by who held his tray SO carelessly.
That moment I was totally defeated. I felt that the world had unreasonably betrayed me. I was like an irritated hedgehog kept in a cage, wanting to scramble and
smash anything. But later after I had managed to pull myself together and tried
to see it from an onlooker, I realized that maybe it was I who, in a way, caused my vexation and despondence, for how trivial the accidents actually were. If I
were indeed defeated, I must have been defeated by myself, instead of the world
, by choosing to be the slave of outer factors. How I wish myself then to be wiser, and not to be entangled in such a weird trap again!
“Squeeze out a smile for yourself when you get upset, no matter how stupid the
smile may make you look.” This is what my friend suggested me to do. I tried, and indeed it worked well. It sounds ludicrous though: how a smile can actually make such a difference? But actually it can. It’s just when you force yourself to smile to yourself, the way of your thinking and the attitude you choose to see
things will unconsciously change accordingly.
In our course of life, I reckon sometimes even though we don’t want to be beat
down by the blues, if we don’t try, we still maybe turn out to be. So maybe the
way I say here is worth trying. After all, what can we get hurt by a smile?
