A Smile at Billion Hearts!

        The world is a beautiful place. Its people, animals, birds, landscape and even the tiniest of organisms create value to one another. There is harmony on the sky, on the Earth, in the fire and in the air we breathe. Life dwells in the present and provides a great amount of learning experience every moment. In the course of my ‘Operation Smile’, I discovered myself more than anything else. All the new friendships which made me to get used to new languages and culture and above the unity of soul between every creature in the world. Of all the great things I learnt, I believing realizing all souls are all the same and the most wonderful. The truth that I felt is the soul inside each and every creature is one and every soul is driven by different vehicles in the form of different names, body structure, gender and color.

       Taking the example of people introducing themselves like ‘I am Deva’, ‘I am Mr.X’, ‘I am Mr.Y’ and so on, the letter ‘I” is common to all just as the way; soul is unique and same to all. ‘I’ is the soul which applies to everyone and the name is the ‘vehicle’ with which everyone drives their life. One beautiful quote in ‘Mahabharatam’ astounds me every time I feel about the beauty of smile. When Krishna rode the chariot of Arjunan during the war, the chariot was tied using five horses. Human philosophy in the modern era has declared the significance of the chariot run by five horses. Those horses with their respective ropes in the hands of the rider signify the five different senses (sensory organs in human body) and the sixth sense is the person himself (brain included!). When I was going through all these eye-opening lessons after joining here in Amrita, I was so much interested in knowing the self which is almost the toughest part in anyone’s life.

     Only during that time, ‘Smile’ was begun or rather assigned. Initially before this process, we may be smiling at strangers retaining to our emotional swings at that particular moment but all those gestures of smile were made unconsciously. Now after the establishment of ‘Smile’, whenever I smile at someone, the smile became conscious and I could realize the complete beauty of smile given and taken! Wow! This self-realization of my smile’s effectiveness is exactly correlated with my eternal search for knowing me. Obviously, the whole process of creating that ‘smile from unconditional love’ excited me incredibly and that indeed changed the way of life to a great extent.

            The smiling ability in a man is a divine gift. It cannot be articulated, but it is a quality that should be imbibed like blood and bone in every cell of life. Such abilities could only be profound by showing deepest affection on self, others and the world. As I mentioned earlier about the similarity of ‘I’ in every living-being, one should believe all living beings are equal and there is no way people could be differentiated on disputably baseless terms. Smile brings the beauty to the place and the great moments in life always accompany with a smile or with tears of happiness! So smile being the integral part of human life has to be showered endlessly and that defines a whole life of positivity and integrity.

            When I knowingly or rather consciously began the process of ‘Life with Smile’, for the first time in my life, I started looking into the eyes of the stranger. Eyes – what a creation it is! Indeed, yes! Eyes carry a lot of information when thrown for a glance and that image strikes as a bone marrow of the human body till the end. Eyes hide behind lot of happiness, endless struggles, withering pain or growing desires. But at the same time, eyes are lesser of secret-keepers. One could control the entirety of other person through the eyes. Hence, when I started looking into the eyes of a stranger feeling that the person who I see should see me back, amazingly many times during this operation, the feeling got real! Magical! Do eyes possess special powers of attentiveness? What does really happen when we find normality in abnormality? How does it feel when you realize 21 years of nothing translates into something powerful that could control self and self-reliant others? Eyes! Eyes contain ‘Yes’ even within them! Wow amazing creation of God – the eyes.

            The moment at which two strangers meet is always an interesting one. When their eyes meet, there arises a sense of strangeness, familiarity, caution, care, friendship, doubt, uncertainty and humanity all at the same time. I consciously realized that few seconds meeting the eyes of a stranger could be so lengthy when I remembered how I was feeling. So when I started to meet new people in their eyes, I made a strong eye contact and had a smile in my face. And after we both crossed each other, I just remembered the situation again and wow how beautiful one’s smile can make our life better. Just imagine yourself getting an affectionate or ‘well-known’ smile from a stranger. You believe that there are people who care for you and thereby eventually every smile boosts your self-confidence to higher levels. I felt the same feeling of my growing confidence when people smiled at me back. It is a feeling like no other and there is a great amount of satisfaction of leading a good life. I developed new friendships completely out of strangers like the lift-support employee at Big Bazaar (Sarjapura Road), Docomo Outlet Salesman, PVR Cinemas popcorn maker and many others in this short span of 30 days. Initially I had the count of people to whom I smiled at but fortunately I lost the count and won the real battle of life in making my environment a happier, healthier place to live in. Knowing thy self knows the eternal power. I am on the way of that search.

            Kindness is an epitome of human behaviour. When kindness is shown to our known ones, it becomes more of a conditional affection, while when it is shown to everyone alike it becomes more of a heavenly bliss and supreme quality. This world has seen and is now seeing few great human souls who have buried their self and put forth their people in front. Money-making or living for the society is just an arbitration of one’s duplicate reality, but the real happiness lays in one’s inner satisfaction and harmless peace. I can realize that inner peace during this ‘Operational Smile’.

            Smile has a direct impact on reducing anger and frustrations. Normally, I am more of a tempered person who cannot take mistakes lightly. I respect everyone’s work and I admire people who live, earn and spend by working hard. So I easily get frustrated when people do not recognise my work. But after this operation, I am getting my innocence back which I have lost on the way after crossing my childhood. Now I am feeling good every moment and living the life the way it comes. Surely, the one change I did which made a great impact or done a great transformation in my life is – SMILE.

            I could see happiness around me and I cherish all those moments. This process made me realize that smile is not bestowed only for the rich and that is deprived for the poor. Smile is an universal act and only because of that, we get a feel of goodness whenever we see whomsoever smiling. Smile defines the person you are. It is not what you are inside but it what you do that defines you. When you do smile, that smiles helps you back in defining you. I believe that the essence of living is to leave behind a legacy that makes others lives better.

            Through this process, I have met numerous people and putting aside some unlucky or non-responsive incidents aside, this is a great learning experience. Now I needn’t think twice to smile, the art of smiling has now become a habit. I am sure that the smile on my face could stay there forever even when my ship is sailing through hardships, storms, hurricanes or abruptly having landed on an uninhibited island.

            ‘Smile’ is just the simplest process that could take a person miles higher to supremacy. The knowledge of people accepting you as their one fellow-being and the nature of creating a space for yourself just for the creation of goodness is something barely believable. The realization of self is complete only when realizing the realization is not realized in the real world. I am happier that I am marching towards the fort that carries peace as wisdom and happiness as its children.