Just smile..

I ended up having one of those conversations the other day, the one I’ve had many times (or at least, several times in reality, many in my head - hence the blog perhaps!). The crux being ‘London’s so unfriendly / nobody ever smiles in London’.

Well, I’m always very defensive of London, and you know you truly love something or someone when you KNOW all the terrible, ugly things about them but you love them anyway. 

But also, I just find this statement so interesting, and I always immediately want to throw back the question, ‘well, when was the last time YOU initiated a smile with a ‘miserable’ stranger?’… 

And why should we assume that everyone else should walk around looking happy for our benefit? 

It’s the classic ‘I’m the centre of the world and everything around me should be as I want it to be, and if it isn’t then it’s the WORLD at fault, not me’. This is an inherent perception and state of mind which I too used to have (and of course still fall back into regularly); most of us, most of the time, just lack the awareness that this world we’re in is not OUR world, and the things that happen don’t happen TO us, they just happen. 

I’ve been doing an experiment for a good few years now. When I see that someone’s approaching me, I smile at them first. I don’t run up to them like a lunatic stalker and freak them out, but I happily make eye contact and directly smile at them. So far, from all the ages, genders, races and so on that I’ve done this with, I can barely think of ONE who didn’t return the smile.

In the main, people aren’t innately unfriendly/friendly/nice/not nice etc. People just ARE. It’s all the internal and outer influences we live through that makes us think and act the way we do. We have the CHOICE to notice that and then perhaps behave differently.  

If we start by pointing the finger at ourselves rather than at the world and others, maybe we’ll realise that the world is what we make it. That we have permission to SMILE FIRST. 

(And, that London ISN’T unfriendly!)..