Smile like you mean it

They’re two pictures taken roughly about a decade apart. The subject in each appears to about 24-25 years old, both with a great head of hair but, really, that’s about where the similarity ends, especially with very marked difference in their coloring.

Except the one thing that draws your eyes back: an honest to goodness, none posing, living it and loving it in the moment, genuinely happy smile.

It might or might not make a difference to someone looking at the pictures to know that both of the people had endured a pretty harsh--and that word’s not being used at all inappropriately-- personal situation some years preceding that picture, made even harder by the fact that they had absolutely no control over the situation and were, in the true a sense, victims of circumstance. Completely different situations, but the kind that--to be cliched about it--changes you for life, and has you coming out either determined to get the better of it, or ambling along weighed down by it. They chose to get ahead, to get the upper hand.

Knowing that tidbit might make their smiles seem more attractive, but not knowing it doesn’t make them any less remarkable. It’s really not relevant for the purposes of your recognizing, and enjoying, pure joy when you see it in someone else’s face, especially not in the moment.

Because--and there may be some who’d disagree--better than being one of the people in the picture? Was probably being the person who took either picture.

Or pictures.

Smiley Faces (live) - Gnarls Barkley