Examen 1

I got out of bed to the sound of my irritating, head-pounding alarm that seemed to ring five minutes after I shut my eyes. I rolled over and thought about how I wanted to do anything but get up, get dressed, and sit in class with a bunch of other tired, stressed, caffeine-driven college students who all equally hated their lives. I thought about practice and never dreaded something more. And all the other things in my life could not be any more piled up. Everything in my day seemed like a negative, so naturally, I put on a frown on my face and went through my routine. As I was brushing my teeth in my bathroom, my roommate walked in behind me and said, “Have a good day Meg!” and then smiled. Already, my piles of homework and long practice ahead of me seemed less dreadful. I smiled back.

I continued downstairs to Iggy’s where I ordered my typical morning omelette. As I approached the front of the line, the woman behind the glass said, “Good morning honey!” with a smile that glowed. It was contagious and immediately, this beautiful, effortless smile transferred to my face. The feeling I felt was a sense of relief. I knew nothing about the Iggy’s worker or anything going on in her life, but this smile united us and in this moment I felt that no matter what, everything was going to be okay. It was in this second when I dedicated my day to smiling, and paying attention to the ways in which a simple smile affected my relationships and communication with the people around me.

As I continued out of Iggy’s and over the Loyola bridge, I started to walk past people on my way to class. On my typical day, I usually have my sunglasses on as I text on my phone. I decided to put my phone in my backpack and leave my sunglasses in their case. As I passed strangers, instead of looking ahead and minding my own business, I looked into the eyes of every person and smiled. While this felt awkward, to my surprise, I received a smile back from every person. I realized that this exchange of a smile said a million words: life is good, I am okay, you are okay, and whatever is going on your life is going to be okay. As I arrived at class, I felt as though I had at least fifty new familiar faces on campus, and I could only hope that each one spread the smile to someone new.

As the day went on, I realized that while experimenting, my dreaded day that began with my annoying alarm turned into a beautiful and happy day that I was excited to live. Not only did the way in which I related to others change, but also my conversations as well. Since I made an effort to smile at every person, the people whom I talked with seemed significantly more approachable. People were more carefree and easy going, and I felt more able to tell people more about my life and how I truly felt. In return, by opening up more, my conversations were much more productive and genuine. As I opened up, people opened up back. I learned more about people because with the simple exchange of a smile, they felt that I truly cared.

When I turned my phone back on after my classes and lunch was over, it was hard not to fall back into my normal routine as a waterfall of texts and social media notifications rushed in. I felt panicked and less happy. As I walked to practice with my eyes on my phone, I laughed at funny posts and smiled at humorous texts. Teammates and acquaintances walked by me and I was so preoccupied with responding to texts and liking instagrams posts that I forgot to look up and smile. In this moment when I realized this, I longed for that true human connection and mutual feeling of happiness. I compared my smiles that stemmed from texts with my smiles that came from other people and I realized that technology only provided a shallow, meaningless version of a smile.

As I reflected on my day in bed that night, I fell asleep with an important lesson learned: we all have our stuff. Beneath the laughter and smiles, we all have inner demons and struggles that we tackle everyday. No matter how happy we seem on the outside, we all have personal, family, and relationship problems and a million things on our to-do lists. Life is hard and carries endless challenges and battles that will keep contesting us everyday of our lives. But together, we can overcome these challenges whether it’s by unplugging from social media, or sitting down for a coffee and listening. But most importantly, we can pay attention to the people around us, and take an extra second to spread a smile to remind ourselves that life is good and everything is okay.