Saturday, September 13, 2008
My Struggle with that little Smile
Smile, gesture of a face, is an external manifestation of feelings of a person inside his/her heart. It has different facets like 1) It can be expression of happiness or good mood 2) It can be sarcastic or 3) It can be a mute version of greeting other people. This piece of article is mostly about its third facet. Smiling on seeing other is a wordless means of communicating "Nice to meet you". Its well practiced not only in USA but is also quite common in India. In USA its merely a emotionless formal gesture and has nothing to do about the feeling of the source to the target person. It's just a well respected social manner. But, what I have learned growing in India is emotion full smiling. Smiling on seeing a known one is not only greeting but tells that they also have good feeling for the other. It's more of a informal greeting than a formal. It carries that etheral feeling of likness. But the things have been changing. Globalization and Corporatization is making us accept it as mere formal greeting than anything else. We should stop reading into the smiles. But, I am having hard time bridging the gap. I just find it hard to smile at a person who is totally unknown to me or I really don't like :) so do they. I am still not ready to accept this more formal, superficial and emotionless smile. But I am working on it... I feel smile with politness just makes you more receptive in the society irrespective of your true self. Carrying that formal smile brings a good aroma in the society. Its the external gesture that gets marketed in the society and not inner self. So, I need to learn to supress the inner feeling and carry that little smile with politness :))
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