Still thinking about the advice to smile, sweetly, constantly. It's just not me, and I'm afraid that I'm too old to start now. People would wonder what sort of mood-altering substance I'm on.
Ever had a total stranger say, "smile, it can't be that bad"? or even worse, a good friend(actually, more of a not-so-good friend, a person that you want to be on your best behavior with.... ). ANNOYING. And, chances are, I'm not in a bad mood. I'm just trying to prevent my wrinkles from deepening... A noble pursuit!
So, I found an interesting old book on google books, "a delsartean scrap-book". published....hmmm, sometime in the 1800's, I'm guessing. I have no idea what, exactly, a delsartean is, but if this is what they're dishing up, count me in:
"Who Invented Smiling?- By some accounts this facial spasm is itself an innovation, and was a trick of fashion set so little time ago at the beginning of the last century...so rapid that absurdity, extended to the ends of Europe. And surely this unmirthful smile that we all employ, this grin that is only of the lips, is an absurd thing, neither natural nor decorous: for why should I smile inanely and endeavor to seem glad when I meet an acquaintance? Why should we return this conventional salutation with a corresponding contraction of the muscles of the face when he sees me? How is he to know that I am not weighed down by some secret sorrow which my smile of greeting thinly conceals? How am I to be sure that my own smile should not rather be a groan of sympathy or a silent tear? We smile in concert, hypocrites that we are, while perhaps our very hearts are torn asunder. How much wiser is the courteous gravity of the Portugese peasant, or the stern salutation of the Oriental, who has not yet caught this European trick of the lips, and who meets and greets his acquaintance with the grave sympathy of one wayfarer meeting another on this rugged, tortuous path of life that has it's ending only in the mysterious grave!!!"
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