She Smiles: and the Key to Happiness
“Isn’t today a wonderful day?” Such excitement! She looks at me expectantly, as if I’m sure to have the answer she wants to hear… she smiles and looks me straight in the eyes.
I‘m just not sure anymore… The buildings up the street still cast their shadow over the neighbourhood.
‘This is not a drill either,’ I think to myself, ‘it’s not some casual social cue for small talk about weather and family — fodder for the dinner table…”
She means it.
But is it a wonderful day?
Surely it must be, if this sweet soul has come to such a lofty conclusion. The sun is shining a few feet away, after all, and the birds — the distant traffic too — can be heard punctuating the late morning… if that’s your kind of scene.
Surely it must — This is not just your average Jane either, stopping on a street corner to chit and chat and be on with it. She knows exactly what she’s doing: her hand waves big and wide to most passers-by, and her legs bounce and grin as if a country western tune was humming along from the village loudspeaker.
Surely it — She reaches out for my hand, and pulls it across my chest to spin me around. She laughs and spins too… it’s so…
“Watch,” she says. And the sun rises just enough to meet us there. I watch as that great, cold shadow slides away.
I turn, and her eyes are closed.
She smiles… I imagine her laughing and spinning too. “I didn’t quite understand the darkness,” I say, “until you showed me that light, just then.”
“Oh,” she laughs. “I can only see in the lightest of light, so I come here everyday — right now, exactly at this time. Every day.”
“I’ve seen you here, but never knew— ”
“Yeah, that’s why. But today! Oh… my word…”
“Isn’t today a wonderful day?”
She looks at me expectantly.
And surely… Her laugh, as she spins, could be the answer.
We’ve had many names (in the civilized world we know) for people like her, and none of them are kind enough. She is one of those rare souls who sees and feels so much more than most, but can express it all so much less.
“Surely,” I say, “I’m quite sure, in fact…” She laughs at my stilted choice of words.
Simple things, they see… the important nuts and bolts of being and loving.
And they are indeed special — life may challenge them especially — but they are far from less than you and I.
I smile.
“I’m quite sure, indeed, that today is the most wonderful day!”
And I mean it… It is a wonderful day, if only because we say it is. Her and I.
You should too!
The sun is shining on us now, after all. And the birds! The distant traffic punctuates…
