There was a period in my life when my freedom was taken away. One day, a guard looked at me and asked why I was always smiling. I was in handcuffs at the time.
“Because I’m alive,” I told her. “That’s already something.”
I did not mean that everything was fine. It wasn’t. Nor did I mean that a smile could make difficulty disappear. Some things hurt. Some situations are unfair. There are days when we are angry, disappointed, frightened or simply tired of dealing with what life has put in front of us.
I have never believed that being alive means we should be cheerful all the time.
What I have learned instead is that a difficult moment does not have to take possession of everything else.
Sometimes a smile helps me loosen my grip on whatever is happening. Not to deny it, but to stop becoming completely trapped inside it. The circumstances may remain exactly the same, yet something in me has shifted enough to make room for another response.
People often talk about “positive” and “negative” energy, and about staying away from people who bring the wrong kind into a room. I have never found the distinction that simple. We all have our high days and our low ones. Sometimes we lift a room; sometimes we are the one who needs lifting. Moods travel easily between people, but so do warmth, patience and humour.
The more useful question, for me, is not who carries the wrong energy. It is what I am bringing with me today.
Over the years, I have become increasingly fond of ordinary life. Not because every ordinary day is wonderful, but because most of life is made of days that would never qualify as important.
Sometimes I spend too many hours at my desk and finally have to invent a reason to leave the house. I tell myself I should go to the gym, or buy something at the market, or simply walk outside. Then I step through the door and remember that I live in the middle of a beautiful place I have barely noticed all day.
Once, I woke in the middle of the night because there was supposed to be an aurora. I went outside and saw no northern lights at all. Instead, I found a sky full of stars.
That seemed a perfectly acceptable outcome.
Life is full of these small substitutions. We go looking for one thing and find another. We make plans, miss something, arrive late, change our minds, feel disappointed and then discover that the day has offered us something we had not thought to ask for.
None of this means we have to pretend disappointment is pleasure.
It simply means disappointment does not get the whole stage.
There are also days when none of this works particularly well. I can be impatient. I can be discouraged. I can sit with a frown on my face and have no interest in smiling at anyone.
That, too, is part of being alive.
Perhaps this is why I still remember that conversation with the guard. The important thing was never the smile itself. It was the fact that even there, in circumstances I would never have chosen, I could still recognize something that had not been taken away.
I was alive.
Years later, I find the thought no less useful. When I am frustrated, tired or caught up in something that feels much larger than it probably is, I sometimes remind myself that I can still be frustrated. I can still complain. I can still frown.
There is something almost funny about that.
If I can still frown, I am still here.
And being here is already quite a lot.
Good to be alive.