A Smile

As kids, our mother taught us: Bring something with you when you visit, fresh cookies, a jar of jam, muffins, blueberry or peach pie (she made both), wildflowers – and a smile. Years on, not good with jams, I try to smile. If smiles were the going currency, how much would we all profit? Good is the day that starts with one.

Having been all over the world – and not speaking most of their languages – a smile is magic, unlocks doors, opens hearts, causes calm to rise, and cortisol to fall.

Decades ago, working in rural India, bringing legal cases to the Indian Supreme Court for the impoverished “Untouchables,” they spoke Tamil or Telugu. I did not. Words got translated, but smiles – theirs and mine – bridged the gaps, built trust.

Try this, if you do not already: Go to work today, go anywhere, with a smile. It is disarming and lightens the mood, politics notwithstanding. Make it real, of course, think well of them until cause is given to think otherwise.

People used to tell us that our mother – a teacher, watercolorist, children’s book writer, often solo parent – had “laughing eyes.” When we smile, we all do.

Consider what her generation and those before her went through – world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Great Depression, diseases with no cures (many now curable), no antibiotics, steroid shots, replaceable joints, and Advil. Yet grateful, they smiled.

These days, we are conditioned by media, social media, humorless ideologies, calls for anger, protest, resentment, and resistance to frown, push power over patience, hubris over humility, envy and enmity over self-awareness and generosity of heart.

Yet smiling is catchy. Enter a room with an open heart, convinced you have something in common, and things change. Doing so is not a weakness; it is a strength.

Winston Churchill, in his epic book The Gathering Storm (1948), wrote: “In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.” Here was the living personification of courage, resolution under fire, determination to prevail, who understood the power of a smile – and, I might add, a good cigar.

The point is that we have tools at our disposal for finding common ground. All of us possess them. We do not readily reach for them these days, but if we did, we would find them useful, empowering, revealing, and disarming. Our smile is one.

So think of a reason to smile, and do it. On the lighter side, Dr. Seuss wrote: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, of “The Great Gatsby” fame, said: “It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.”

Mother Theresa – who ministered in Calcutta – said: “Peace starts with a smile …Every time you smile at someone, it is an act of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” So there it is, we can bring beauty, maybe even peace, if we try.

The comically irreverent Mark Twain slowed to write: “Life is short, Break the Rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably. And never regret anything … that makes you smile.” He gave that gift often.

So, with nothing in our pockets, we can still bring a smile. It is a gift. My mother had it right, with her wisdom, pies, and laughing eyes. Good is the day that starts – and good is one that ends – with a smile.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!