smMYling

In our own despair we often forget that others around us are also suffering. It's easy to do. We are very self-centered creatures normally. Think about it. When your mom asked you to clean your room you thought to yourself, "MOM! I just have three more levels before I beat this Zelda!!! Can't you wait!" You then were plagued with doubts about your mother's love for you and you have never ever been the same since. No, but really, when your teacher at school assigned you a major homework assignment the night of your biggest game in your life's history didn't you sit around in a circle with all your buddies and bash on that good-for-nothing teacher that should realize that half of the people in his class are on the team with the biggest game in their "career" on the line and he expects you to finish this torturous assignment? Who can worry about something as trivial as Math or even English when something important is on the line such as your basketball career. We really are centered on ourselves.
Today I had the opportunity to smile at a hundred people as they made their way through door L of the BYU-I I-Center for devotional. As I tried to practice an infectious smile I had a long while to think about myself and the people going in and out my door. Some were really quiet and wouldn't look at me in the face until I said, "Enjoy devotional!" then most heard me and smiled and said "thanks." But then there were others that maybe didn't hear me and never looked my way and on their lips wasn't even a remnant of a smile. This makes me reflect on myself negatively and ask "what if I failed?". I remind myself of the poem by Emily Dickinson, "They might not need me; but they might. I'll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity." And again I ask, "What if I failed?"
I was always smiling and even if sometimes my voice did stutter I did welcome them to devotional. So I really can't say I didn't do my part to try and make their day better. They just didn't give me the chance to.
It makes me feel so much better on a bad day when a complete stranger acknowledges my existence because it jars me away from thinking about me and my problems and reminds me that there are other people on the planet too. So what am I trying to get at? I'm not sure. Maybe I want to ask you to look at the people that you walk past on the sidewalk and smile. Maybe that's all they needed at that moment. You could be the one do give it to them. And I think that'd make them smile back. Plus the world will be a happier place if the people in it showed their pearly whites once in a while.