Masks may hide smiles, while lack of physical closeness and contacts may prevent expressions of love, but if smiles and love are authentic, you can find other creative ways to show them. You can use your eyes, looking at whoever and whatever you meet with love. If you stay at home and don’t see anyone, you can always smile in solitude while thinking about someone or something. No matter what happens in the world, you can always imagine many beautiful things and smile.
Maybe it may be legitimate to object that in current circumstances there is not so much to smile about.
Why have you smiled in the past?
For good news? For a narrow escape? For the illusion that your happiness could last forever or as long as possible? To exhibit optimism and well-being?
Life in this world is packed with situations of illness, pain and death, as well as moments of health, pleasure and life. But in the end, as you know, everything here always deteriorates and dies without exceptions.
Only when the situation affects us personally or it becomes a public emergency, then we finally wake up and realize that the emergency has always been there.
But this is not a good reason to stop smiling.
How things turn out in this world we’ve always known. And it is precisely when they really end or could end, that you can understand the true meaning of your smile, as well as all your smiles.
A smile, at this moment, is not an exhibition of optimism, nor a way to show trust and support positive thinking. A smile cannot be another mask, a mask behind the smile.
A smile can now simply be a smile, without any end, which opens up to the inner mystery of its presence, a smile behind the mask.