Comments on: “You Need To Smile More.”

By: Rev. Paul T. McCain

Rev. Paul T. McCain — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:03:45 +0000

You ought to become a Lutheran. Not smiling is a mark of orthodoxy.

: )

By: Mary

Mary — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:52:26 +0000

I was looking for ways to help me smile more and laugh more after watching my husband havign a wonderful time with another girl this weekend it really got me thinking perhaps I do need to smile more and laugh she didn’t even know him or him her and they looked like they were having such a great time. I wished right then and there that we looked like to others. It occurred to me how it does seem to others when they tell me to smile or laugh I was in their shoes or rather his. Now that I found this post and others who re like me and not only are not natural smilers, feel like fakers when they do smile and can’t stand it when others greet us with a “smile more, What’s wrong”as if something were. A lot of the time I am thinking or concentrating on something and not on how I should look. I am still confused I suppose. It was nice to know there are others like me.I am an introvert and think this does have a lot to do with things. As for captain kangaroo the same characters on Pooh the rabbit, donkey, and goffer.

By: linda

linda — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:21:39 +0000

i hear quite often from people that i look unhappy or that i seem depressed, and should smile more. i am content with my life. i am not the type of person who loves, or really even likes smiling. i smile and laugh when i find things to be funny not so that others are satisfied. i do smile now because i feel obligated to in order to get those people to shut up. i feel fake and that does make me unhappy. sometimes i just want to tell those people to back to the land of Oz!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:01:05 +0000

There oughta be a law. It has always gotten under my skin when someone tells me to smile as if I was oncoming traffic and I was drifting over the yellow line. A dentist once told me I don’t smile because I was subconciously hiding my crooked teeth. He was making a sales pitch for a set of caps.
At work one day I was having a perfectly good day when a fellow comes walking down the hall and orders me to cheer up. I really was full of cheer until he opened his mouth.
I haven’t found a good response to these people yet.

By: Brendt

Brendt — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 03:06:33 +0000

OK, I’ll contribute the vacuous comment.

I hear that administrative assistant saying that you’ve “got a case of the Mondays”.

Now I gotta go watch Office Space again.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 21:45:01 +0000

Though not a pastor, I get that all the time…especially from some of the older ladies at my church. Certain tragic events in my life (not embarrassed, just doesn’t seem right to mention specifically) has quelled that spirit.

Perhaps that’s it: people think you have to have a reason NOT to smile!

By: Hixie

Hixie — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:42:04 +0000

Michael,

First of all you have one of the great peels of laughter that I know. I’ve always put more stock in a good hearty laugh than a smile that seems to be there because it’s “supposed” to be there. As for being a preacher goes, folks I know want to stay away from a preacher who smiles all the time. It seems that they are of the opinion that if a preacher is always smiling, he must be up to something. mmmmmm….

Hixie

By: Tarwater

Tarwater — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:45:27 +0000

Have you read Alexander Schmemann’s Journals? He has much to offer regarding the place of joy. Chesterton isn’t bad either. Peace.

By: John M.

John M. — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:57:09 +0000

Similar to this is the dilemma of people who want to be chatty all the time. If you don’t feel like talking but decide to just sit and listen politely, they think you are being “mean”.

By: eclexia

eclexia — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:04:47 +0000

We had a guy speak at our church about some work he had done in an orphanage in Botswana. He was showing us pictures of the kids there and none of them was smiling and he was saying, “See how sad and hopeless they look.” Now, I don’t know about Botswana, but in some parts of eastern Africa, it is a big deal to make sure you look serious and do NOT smile for pictures. As an outsider, I never fully understood all the reasons why (at weddings, it was important not to smile in order to show how seriously you were taking your vows. For other types of pictures I never learned why smiling was taboo.)

While the Bible does speak of joy, and while smiles are an important part of showing relational “welcome” in America (your points were helpful to me, Tim and Andy), it seems pretty silly to make a smile the basis of judging another person’s level of (1) hope or (2) spiritual joy.

I do get frustrated when people make sweeping assumptions based on the interpretation of nonverbals. Although they are an important part of communication which should be taken into account, they cannot definitively be nailed down to only one meaning, even within the same culture. A smile or lack of a smile can mean different things for different people.

As for Joel Osteen, that’s another story. I don’t really have a problem making sweeping assumptions about his smile