Just Smile

And other irrelevant bullshit

Photo by Alison Bogart on Unsplash

I will be brief, devoted BOYD readers.

My absence from this space probably annoys me more than it annoys you. I am currently riding shotgun on the recent bandwagon of Substack writers who have all asked, “What can I possibly write about that makes one damn bit of difference when the whole world is on fire, and America is holding the flame-thrower?” It all seems so ridiculous.

Maybe I should be elated, because this administration is cranking out dead ideas like they invented sliced bread. DOA — all of them. Crack a book, Donny. The Gilded Age is a blight on our popular history, and McKinley ended up dead. But I digress.

I am not an advocate of smiling through the discomfort, as many suggest. If no one gets their ire up over injustice, democracy loses. Too many people are already suffering in this Federal break from common human decency. It feels disingenuous to grin and bear it, when what I really want is to smack the entire chain of command across the face and ask them, “Who is your mother?”

I also don’t smile on command, as a central tenet of The Women’s Code. I am not a trad wife. I have not agreed to be a second class citizen in exchange for perceived security and protection from men against other men. I am more than capable of seeing the spuriousness of that approach.

I am a long-recovering people pleaser. I am angry because I have friends who are scientists, and queer people, and immigrants, and females who are being demonized as four-letter words. (Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del) is my new hero for her Madam Chair burn. Special appreciation to Rep. William Keating (D-Mass) for standing up to a bully.)

I have every right to be angry, so don’t tell me it is not a good look. Must be nice to have that level of personal security.

And yet…needs must to survive this period of temporary insanity.

As much as I dislike the sentiment of smiling through, I have learned that, in fact, smiling has physiological and psychological merit. It boosts dopamine! It releases neuropeptides! And, I have been told that my default thinking face (which is always lately) is scary, hard core RBF. That can’t be good for anyone.

So my first line of defense these days is trying to smile more. It was telling that, on the first day of my little experiment, my smile muscles shuddered from disuse. Now, I try to smile at everyone I meet, no matter how much I want to punch them in the throat (Thanks for the inspiration,

Jenn Mann

!).

And results show that it actually works! When you human like a decent human, and acknowledge other humans as full humans, they decent-human right back at you. Everyone’s day is lifted. Faith in some parts of humanity is restored. Five Stars. Highly recommend.

What are you doing to persist through the madness these days?

Smile on purpose!

-IWW