Smile for the Camera!
Has someone ever greeted you in some other way than the standard “hey how are you?” Or some variation thereof? To which you of course respond “I’m fine .. how are you?” Afterwards realizing that they never asked you how you were but you regurgitated the automatic response. You probably aren’t or weren’t fine. You also probably didn’t care how they are …. you just said it back. I know when I do this I gloss over the fact that I just answered a question they didn’t ask me, usually never even acknowledging it and moving on to either another topic. Or most likely moving on entirely because let’s be honest, they didn’t care about whatever question they asked me and I didn’t care about their response to my question. That’s terrible, its terrible to admit and its terrible to do, but there I am ….
My son laughed for the first time yesterday. His first wonderful beautiful untainted laugh. No meaning behind it, no ulterior motive or thought, he just laughed. It was incredible to hear and I spent the rest of the day unsuccessfully trying to get him to do it again.
Developmentally my son smiles at me because I smile at him. He has learned that when he makes specific facial expressions people respond with a similar facial expression and that we are pleased. So he mimics us and then we mimic him over and over again until at some point I will say “Smile for the camera!” and he will. He laughs because I laugh at him and while I know this is true when he smiles at me, I am convinced he loves me and I stop whatever I am doing because that smile is the most important thing in the world. When he laughed at me, I teared up because it was the most incredible sound in the world.
My point I suppose is my son’s smile and consequent laugh right now at this moment are the most pure things he can do. When he smiles at you you know he means it, when he laughs at you its because he thinks you are funny. These actions that bring such joy to my heart will never be this genuine again. He will eventually learn to smile for the camera. I use that as a representation of all of our interactions. We put on a show, smile when we are supposed to; laugh at our bosses jokes; ask how someone is doing, most of it disingenuous.
I will almost feel bad when my son learns to smile for the camera, not because I don’t think that he will be happy in 90% of those pictures but because the other 10% will be the beginning of the end.
Mean what you say every time. Smile because you want to, not just to appease someone else. Make your actions genuine, so your relationships will also be genuine. You hear all the time that life is about relationships. I couldn’t’ agree more, so stop having fake ones. Stop smiling for the camera and just smile, just laugh and mean every action. Those people in your life will thank you for it and maybe they will start acting the same way. Then we could be a genuine culture, instead of this fake one.
