Smiling - for No Good Reason

And then the reasons come...

It’s all I’ve ever wanted -

To be in Love
with life

smiling for
no good reason

My heart
overflowing with the joy

that makes the lamb leap.

I didn’t know what it was to be
alive like that

until death
cracked me open -

made me find
the sap that makes the
buds unfurl…

Now, that sap flows freely,
smiling, I discover,

is our natural state.

To be alive,
now,
to relish,
feast,
play…

to encourage,
soothe,
admire…

To be in Love
with life,
delighting…

This is who we are.

Alive and
smiling,

for no good reason.

And then the reasons come…

Smile anyway…

These days, I smile, any-which-way I can.

I love setting my sat nav to smiling before I step into my day. Not waiting for something to please me, but choosing the stream that is smiling as it flows.

Smiling anyway. Just smiling. And then the reasons come…

The poem my sister sent me today, Brian Bilston’s
‘…ten thousand tiny acts of kindness
which happen unnoticed before breakfast…’ His words light me up inside…

The text from a darling friend, relishing the evening we’d shared with harp, bodhran, flute, guitar and Celtic song… So rich, the music; selkie-soaked - such joy! Amplified a million-fold by sharing it with her. And then re-sharing it, again and again…

The holes I know in the bracken behind our house, where the foxes come and go. Watching one smell the early sunshine and relax, safe in the cunning of his bracken-bronze coat. The sight floods me with delight… remembering it floods me again...

And if I can’t smile…

I love knowing now what I didn’t know for over half a century.

When I can’t smile, I don’t need to force it. I don’t need to fix it. There’s nothing broken in here.

It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s ok.

When I’m grieving or worried, anxious or sad, or raging or jealous or despairing.

It’s ok.

It’s ok to be exactly where I am.

And if I want - so very much want - to feel like smiling…

It’s enough to set my inner sat nav and then just breathe for a while…

Simply turning attention to the idea of smiling,
loving the idea of feeling like smiling,
’Wouldn’t that be nice…?’
loving the fact that I want to smile…

… this simple focus is enough.

As I turn my puppy-mind’s head towards smiling,
as I imagine how good
it would be if I could…
not that I can…
but if I could, that,
yes, it would be good…

Then I wash the dishes, water the plants, empty the rubbish, make the tea… I keep the puppy on track with soothings…

It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok…

It’s not my job to make smiling come to me.
It’s my job to choose, to imagine, to enjoy.
It’s my job to ease myself gently into love-mode.

When I’m troubled, I can love that I want to be relaxed.
That the biggest part of me has already become that.
That my essence is smiling already.

And it’s ok for me to allow my inner being to flood that smiling all over me.
Soon, so soon, that’s exactly what happens.

“We choose our joys and our sorrows long before we experience them.”

- Khalil Gibran -

I choose joy.

I choose joy.

I choose joy!

With deep appreciation for all who have brought me into a life of smiles...
My writing, my coaching, my life is inspired by many wondrous teachings, particularly those of Abraham-Hicks.