"Why Don't You Smile More?"

I was once asked the question “Why don’t you smile more?”. It wasn’t out of the blue, or accusatory, I believe it was out of genuine curiosity when I refused to smile at something amusing. And I thank the person for asking me this question; not at the time, though, because I didn’t have an answer then. My recent hiatus from posting here has coincided with a period of self-analysis, or what you might call “finding oneself”, so I feel more able to answer that question.

My natural reaction to something amusing or funny, or something that makes me happy is, like any human, to smile. It’s intrinsic, we’re born to it, we don’t have a choice. But of course we can control the muscles in our face (at least the major ones), so it is possible to restrain a smile once it has started. So that’s what I was doing, and that’s what got noticed. A side note: something that supports the left-brain right-brain theory is that I smile predominantly with the left side of my face, which is connected to the more emotional and less logical right side of the brain. That’s what people were presented with when I tried to hide a smile: the slight extension of the left of my mouth and a bit of a squint. Charming.

The question you might be asking is why. It’s nothing to do with social acceptability, or even the tribal instinct for group acceptance and positive reinforcement. If fact, it’s the opposite of smiling for safety, it’s ‘not smiling’ for safety. It stems from the sad thought that opening up emotionally will not only let in good feelings, but bad ones. This has some scientific basis, but is not the way to a healthy life.

Negative experience (negative feedback) is a much stronger behaviour modifier than positive feedback. So the desire not the experience a negative is greater than the desire to feel a positive. Here, drink this – it’s either vanilla or earwax flavour. Do you drink it? The optimistic would say yes, but the realist and the pessimist would say no (the pragmatist would probably say yes, because no matter what it was, it was a free glass that he could fill with something else). I suppose as examples go, there are better... Either way, I didn’t smile, so I didn’t open myself up to negative emotions.

But that doesn’t work. Take an umbrella so you don’t get wet. Oh, you stepped in a puddle? Take waterproof socks and trousers. That’s silly, and I don’t use that word lightly.

What am I saying…? Don’t wear an emotional dry-suit. And smile more, it makes you happy. Science said so.