There's Something Out There... It's Imagination!

There is something very pleasing about just sitting in my room and looking out of my window at the silhouetted trees against the never darkened sky.  I can vaguely make out the green of the nearest one, but I can’t help but wonder if that is just because I know that it should be green.  As I look out and trace the leaf lines in front of the metallic sky I have the chance to reflect over the day that I’ve had.

Usually this takes the form of writing short phrases of exciting or amusing incidents of the day on my Twitter feed.  Some things I just sit here and laugh aloud at and some things leave me pensive and thoughtful.  Where possible I try to conclude the evening’s thoughts with something that is a combination of the two.  So today’s is a comment that was made to me about the amount of films I know off by heart and how sad it was that I should live my life by matching it to a film.  It’s true, too.  No matter what has just happened there is a line from a film or a TV series that I can match it up to.

It’s rather fitting that I can mention a part in the film “You’ve Got Mail” where she compares her life to what she reads in books…

Perhaps I am just a sorry individual who is rather obsessive over films and shows, perhaps I can just soak in all the lines that are spoken or perhaps there is an element of make believe that I feel is lacking from today’s world.  In actuality it’s a bit of all of them. At the back of my mind there is a nagging quality that reminds me how important it is to have an imagination, as well as a constant fear that I might one day lose it.  I can’t imagine my life without imagination.

Today we visited a castle close to Home and as we were exploring the ruins - well not so much exploring because we’d been round it a fair number of times - I was constantly imagining what had happened there, what might have happened there and what could happen there.  There are very few things that can stop an adventurous mind from imagining and a small chain across an opening wasn’t a sufficient enough deterrent.  It’s amazing what an inspirational effect a secluded spot can have and whenever I get such a chance I try to soak it all up.  I won’t accept that what the mainstream shows me is all there is of life.

I’m one of those crazy people who names everything I own.  My guitars are named Gerty, Graeme and Gordon.  I love alliteration although my laptop’s name is Arty.  My crazy love of naming everything often distresses people, I can’t imagine why.  Isn’t it normal to name musical instruments and electrical gadgets?!  Apparently not.

So, today as I look out at the leafy shadows, I’m reflecting on how lucky I am to have a vivid imagination, perhaps too much so from time to time.  I watch films to feed my imagination, to broaden my outlook and understand better other people and situations.  Life without imagination is a little like a picture without colour…  Not the best analogy in my case because very few of my pictures ever have colour of them, but an accurate comparison.

I hope I bring colour into people’s life, hopefully yellow like sunshine because that is my favourite colour.  I hope my imagination can spark some of your own and in turn the beacons of imagination can carry throughout everyone.  I heard someone once say: “There is no shame in not seeing your dreams come true, but it is a crime to have no dreams in the first place”.  With imagination as a shining torch I guarantee that will never happen.

Long live the right to dream!

Ineffability OR Why "What is Love?" is a Silly Question

During my degree - way back now, buried in the distant past - I was lucky enough to do a course on New Testament Greek.  One thing that sticks with me from this course (apart from the fact that the lecturer used to check to see if we’d actually done the prep work, which I hardly ever had) was that the Greeks had four different words that had the meaning “love”.

Initially this was something of an annoyance to me - after all, why learn 4 words when they could all be defined by one? - but over the years this fact has stuck with me and, though it sounds more cheesy than a ploughman’s sandwich, has shaped my view on the eternal question of what love really is.  I’m sure there is a scientific explanation for love, since when two people strike it off so well it is referred to as “chemistry”, but I think love is something that might just be a little too intangible for science to try and explain away.

Every Christmas we still hang up stockings in the parlour around the fireplace - although the chimney is closed up - and last Christmas one of the gifts inside on Christmas morning was a paperweight with the word “LOVE” on it.  It’s sitting on my drawers at the moment, not holding down papers but still looking very nice.  It got me thinking about love, what it is and what it means to people.  As the last blog might have revealed I am a fan of John Denver’s music, his melodies and especially his lyrics.  He wrote a song called “Perhaps Love” which I have had the privilege to sing on a few occasions as a duet with my sister.  In it he lists a number of things that different people say love is, but I think love is all those things to all people though different avatars are attributed to it depending on what the individual is like.

The four sides of love that the Greeks saw were:

• Family Love (storge)
• Comradely - a word I really struggle to say - Love (philos)
• Passionate Love (eros)
• Soulful Love (agape)

And when considering how different each one of these are, it becomes clear why the Greeks wanted different words for them.  Whatever it is that attracts one person to another it will inevitably be one of these things, the best matches are those that share 3 of them.

As with most things, I think the obsession with the question is what hides the answer.  I’m loved and I love but I’m still searching for love.  I think, deep down, it is what every human on the planet is searching for, irrespective of whether they have found it.  It’s not one of those things that has a limit - family, brotherhood, passion and especially soul are all boundless.  A man - or a woman, I wouldn’t want to be accused of discrimination - has not lived if they have not loved.

So get out there and spread a little love - and no, I don’t mean eros love, I mean agape.  Get that ineffable feeling of all those things John Denver tried to list, because with love comes inspiration and with inspiration comes courage and with courage: dreams come true.

Love is many faceted and I think there are far more forms of it than just four, perhaps I should invent words for them…  Or maybe I should just thank Plato, Aristotle and Socrates for making my course four times as hard but my view of life four times richer.

Cheers, boys!

The Art of Understatement and Belonging

Whilst lying in bed this morning and casually bemoaning to the entire world - via those increasingly growing medias that are Facebook and Twitter - that I had to get out of bed and actually do some work, it was brought to my attention that “conventional” jobs had already started (conventional in this case merits those inverted commas as anyone who knows the sister involved would confirm that she is far from conventional in many other ways) and I realised just how lucky I was to have my job.

I’m not conventional.  There is nothing “normal”, “typical” or “standard” about me.  If truth be told it’s taken me a long time to realise that this is a good thing.  Sometimes it has been hard to be different, to have a group of friends with whom your only similarity is a school memory, sometimes not even a good one, or a shared age.  I confess I am one of those people who is notoriously hard to find a similarity with, having something to do with the way in which my world spans anywhere from 800 to 15 years in the past.  It is true, I struggle to accept that the millennium has turned and certainly can’t come to terms with the fact that we are over eleven years in to it.

Why do I consider such remote people as friends?  Because we have a shared experience, even if it is one in which I played a minor role.  Understatement is an art.  Just as in décor and design, subtlety is the best approach to life.  It is a skill to be below the consciousness of people but eternally present, I’m not sure what it’s value is unless it is just to further one’s people watching skills - as afore mentioned - but it is a skill that I have become adept at.  Of course, I am not understated in every sense - my hosiery is considered rather obvious - and for the first time in the 25 years of my life I have become a trend setter with my insane leg wear.  I’m very proud of my collection of tights in much the same way as most “normal” women love their shoes!

There is a human need to belong - that is why we have clubs and teams that mean so much to us, whether they are school teams, fan clubs, or community groups each of us have belonged to something at sometime.  Belonging, and that need to belong, is one of the things that make us human.  Knowing our place in such a group, team or environment is trickier.  I’m from a family that is so tight-knit we’re waterproof, so there has never been a problem of belonging in this group, but knowing where I fitted in to other groups and the world in general has been a little harder.

You may not see the connection here, but it was not until I took a backseat in the procedures of the world that I realised where I really fitted in.  For fifteen years I have been looking out for where my place in the world was, trying to capture that sense of belonging that so many of the “popular” kids at school had but so often had to compromise whatever principles they possessed to get there - I still hear it talked about today - with no subtlety or understatement.  But I was searching too hard.  Whenever I drive across the Caithness landscape I can achieve that incredible warm glow that belonging gives.  I don’t go out looking for it now, it comes to me.

Today’s advice states:
Today- Is the first day of the rest of your life! Let everything up to this point serve as practice in the march toward your goals & dreams!
And now, on my list of goals I can tick off “Find my niche”.  I have the world’s most incredible job, helping people to become tomorrow’s musicians and strive to reach their potential.  Of course there have been tumbles and uncertain stretches along the way, but it’s all been good practice.

Go out; find where you belong, but don’t alter to blend in with the crowd.  Be yourself and be proud of your unique way of viewing the world and eventually the world will become what you want it to be and a space for you will open up.  Take it from the one with the voice of experience.

Welcome to the first day of the rest of our lives!

Dinosaurs and Friendly Influences

Yesterday we visited the Castle of Mey, something of a local landmark, that was once the home of the Queen Mother.  I’m a signed up member of the “friends” of the castle meaning that I can get in for free at any time, but in actual fact I only ever seem to go when we have people staying up here [NOTE TO SELF: frequent places of interest more often].  Each time I go, and I’ve been five times, I see something new.  It’s like my eyes focus on one thing I’ve missed up until now.  I don’t know if it’s that the guides there sneak out new artefacts or that I just never noticed them, but it never fails to amaze me that I have overlooked so many things.

I pride myself on being observant.  I used to be quite good at Kim’s Game where you have a tray of different things and have to remember them all when they are covered up.  Usually I’d make up ridiculous ways of remembering them, often with rhymes or acronyms.  I’ve always enjoyed playing with words - and you’re reading the results of it now, lucky you!!!  My best form of observation, though, is not of little dinosaurs hiding in the flowerpots (anyone who’s been to Bowermadden in Caithness will know that there are dinosaur breeding programmes up here) but is of people.  Very often, especially when heading south into the busier parts of the world, I will sit in the car rather than wander out into city streets and just watch the people who go by.  Slightly agoraphobic, perhaps, but more a fascination with this peculiar species called humans.  Virtually all the characters I write of in my various assorted stories are based on persons I have seen or known.  Having said all that, my observational skills are clearly deteriorating, as I spent the entire tour trying to work out where I knew the tour guide from, only for her to inform me where we met six months ago.

Perhaps life is getting too busy.  When I start to forget people, or overlook them, it may well be time to step back and remind myself of the Fs in life - or F-ing priorities, as I sometimes call them.

Faith and Family

Freedom

Friends 

Food 

Finance

Forgetting people can be rather embarrassing.  It’s just about acceptable to forget names from time to time, especially as many of my friends are currently changing their’s to fit in with married life, but it is a sinking feeling when someone approaches you and begins talking about something as though you are meant to know exactly what they are going on about.  I’ve found myself in this position a few times and have promised myself that when it gets to the stage where I can’t remember all my pupils names and times off by heart, I shall stop taking on new ones.

People have touched my life, and they deserve to be remembered for it.  It may not have been recently - indeed, some of my best friends are people I formed a bond with over two decades ago - it may not have been positively - I was one of those poor souls who was bullied continually at school - but it is these exchanges with people that have made me who I am today.  And I am one of the lucky people in this world who can honestly say that I am happy with who I am.  Of course, I’ve got ambitions - who doesn’t?  John Denver wrote a song called Poems, Prayers and Promises that talked about how good life was, how important people’s relationships with one another were and how life should be lived to its full with dreams and aspirations.  That’s where I’m at.

And so, today’s blog is a thank you.  To you, whoever you are.  You’re here because somewhere along the ever-expanding road of time we’ve connected.  You’ve given me inspiration.  You may know me already and have come to this through Facebook; perhaps you found me on Twitter; or maybe it was an accident stumbling across this here because you and I share a common interest that was tagged into this blog.  Whatever it was, you’re helping me to be me.  I hope I am helping you to do the same.

Incidentally, in a previous blog I talked of the seemingly impossibility of smiling being anything but good.  In an effort to prove me wrong today, Judith’s pearly whites attracted a fly whilst smiling at someone…  I’m still not convinced that this is a good enough reason not to smile…

Golden Opportunities and Giant Cruise Ships

Yesterday I got up insanely early - for me at any rate - and trundled along to watch the largest privately owned cruise ship in the world drop anchor off shore from my little town.  As should always be expected, or at least always happens to me, when we got to the cliff head path there was no ship to be seen.  After wandering around for a few minutes, about forty to be a little more precise, we meandered home again.  Within five minutes of getting through the front door, the website was checked and we were out again and rushing back to the cliff side path - thankfully just two minutes away - to see the spectacle.

There was a thin haar on the water, and as the ship glided through it, there was a ghostly feel to the whole event.  It didn’t last.  Other people, now, were emerging to watch it and it certainly was rather spectacular, not least for the sheer size of it.  Totally unbelievable and simultaneously fantastic that of the 60 or so worldwide stops they chose to make Home Harbour one of them.  In this little corner of the world it is easy to forget we are here, but thanks to this visitation we will be firmly back on the map again - at least for a time.

I spent the remaining hours of the very long, dragging day regretting my early morning.  Thankfully, I had a quiet day of music and was only working for a grand total of two hours or I may have fallen asleep on the piano.  But while the county has, for the most part, been eagerly gauging the ship which is currently anchored a (very strong person’s) stone throw from the harbour, my brain with its often simplistic but frequently unique view of things has been drawing upon the peculiar metaphors of yesterday’s arrival.  Not least there springs to mind the expression regarding your boat coming in…  Typical, that this might well be my boat and it can’t even dock at the harbour!

Here’s what really got me thinking…

The rather pretentious name of this ship is “The World”, neatly - albeit largely - written on the front so that it was clearly visible from where I stood on the shore.  The thought occurred to me that it’s arrival in such a remote place as Home Harbour, its tantalising appeal and its brief stay were all characteristics of the real world.  I don’t mean the earth, like rocks and minerals, I mean the world, like golden opportunities and personality.  What if today was about the world of opportunities knocking on my door and all I could do was watch it from afar?  Of course I appreciated its dramatic arrival, not in a blinding flash of light like a Damascus Road revelation, but something that emerged from the foggy mists of my own life, an opportunity.  And here’s that spine tingling moment, where the unusual feel of anticipation makes you jittery and tense with expectation.  As is so often the case with opportunities, you can be told that there is one coming along and ensure that you are out, ready and waiting for it, only to find that it is no where to be seen, but when you stop sitting on the edge of your seat and get on with life, you find that the opportunity will finally present itself.

We weren’t the only people to be standing on the cliff top but we were certainly the first and there was a feeling about the opportunity, like it should be yours because you were there first, you saw it first - but really, we are most lucky when we can hand that opportunity on the someone else.  I like to think that some of the people who trekked out to see “The World” did so because they were following our example.  That, in some way, I led then to that small opportunity.

It didn’t make it into the port - Home Harbour was designed at a time when boats did not have such a deep keel - but waited in the bay, sending out little vessels to take people to and from the shore, like the little opportunities leading up to the big one.  I didn’t go.  Like with so many opportunities in life, I preferred the drama of it arriving in the bay to the thought of going over and looking into it further.  Some people went over on the little boats and visited it and I really hope they found “The World” of opportunities.

One day I might pluck up the courage to sail out on those little chances to the world’s largest opportunity.  I just hope that when the time comes, I’m awake enough to seize the opportunity and make the most of what life offers me.  I don’t know when my next opportunity will come along, but I really hope that when it does I’ll be ready, I won’t simply watch and feel that because it is not in easy reach it is unobtainable.  So I’m endeavouring to match up to yesterday’s words of encouragement:

WORK HARD & GO FOR IT & TRY & ARE ALSO PATIENT! 

Working hard to create those opportunities, going for them when they come sailing in, trying to fulfil them and being patient in waiting for them to arrive.

I’m making a push to get things done, setting up opportunities and trying to muster the courage to take them.  In the mean time, find yourself a metaphor - they are fun to play with but should carry the following warning:

DISCLAIMER: Understanding The World in metaphors is like seeing the world in mirrors, always accurate to yourself but varying depending on the angle you look at it from.

Films, Grit and Determination

I just finished watching a film that almost killed me laughing, snuggled into bed, checked Twitter and discovered Finding Nemo was on the trending list.  Idea for a Blog just arrived.  I was in the middle of writing one last night for you all, but it was so tedious I fell asleep in the process.  If I bore myself, I can only imagine what it must do to you all!

I’m something of a filmaholic.  I love films, all types apart from horror which I just zone out of.  I think there is enough horror around the world without having to add extra scenes of gore and monstrosity into the boiling pot.  The film I watched tonight was like my perfect film, with action, comedy, and, of course, a character to fall in love with.

Over the years, and more so in the recent past, people have suggested a film - or a TV series - about our slightly unusual family.  I think it would be great, but I can’t help the niggling thought that the world just aren’t quite ready for us.  By looking at the stats for this site I can tell that a lot of the people who view my blog have already met my family through the realm of cyber space and have been redirected here from A Murder of Crows, our site.  As you may gather from those pages, there is never - and really, I mean never! - a dull moment in this household.

But films and scripts are like everything else that I attempt to discipline myself to.  They are so often started and never completed.  I look through the collection of writings I’ve done and so many that are left unfinished.  Is this the fate of an artist without a muse, or is it - more likely - the sheer lack of grit and determination?  My sister, Judith, is pursuing her film through hell and high water to ensure it gets done.  Our family are an inspiration in continuing to use creativity.  Our house is like a library and one of the most beloved collections of books we have is a set called the Value Tales.  These are an American series that are biographies for children of certain individuals whose life had excelled in some “value”, for example Charles Dickens was The Value of Imagination.  We grew up with these books, I’ve no idea where they came from, but they have always been taken for granted by me, or used to rest writing paper on - they are the perfect size to hold A4 - until now.  My two favourites were the stories of Helen Keller and Louis Pasteur and their values were Determination and Believing in Yourself - not rabies, as I used to believe - and yet of the set, those are the two values I most struggle with.

This made me think back to films.  In this household every Friday night is film night when we all sit down together and watch a film of one person’s choosing.  Depending on the film, we occasionally analyse it afterwards and one comment that was made to me was regarding my need for an explicit hero character, not one of these dark antiheroes, but the proper sweep you off your feet type thing.  I fully expect to get shot down by some of my readers for suggesting this but feminism infinitely dashed the chances of finding these overtly romantic men with its aggressive stance that was so pro-women it became anti-men.  Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the right to vote and equal pay for jobs but it is my firm belief that, whilst men and women are equal in their rights, they are not equal in every particular.  I certainly hope that when Mr Right finally does appear at my door, he’ll appreciate my choice to be what I want, even if that is a housewife.

So I’m still looking for my hero, perhaps a little too hard.  It could be time for me to take my own advice, to Believe in Myself, like Louis Pasteur, or have Determination, like Helen Keller.  Today, the Twitter site of a certain individual I follow - that is in a Twitter sense, not in a scary stalking way! - gave these words of wisdom:

Today! If you fight all those who wish for you to fail- you'll be too weak to succeed! Work hard & stay focused and you'll outlast them all! 

My initial thought ran something like: “Well, that’s fine for you to say, you’ve got where you wanted.”  Then I reread it, and after flicking through a few web pages full of critics and their reviews of films and books, I realised the value of Believing in Myself and Determination.  Yes, perhaps people will fight against me succeeding and perhaps critics will tear my work apart, but my artistry means so much to me that I will outlast them all.  I’m planning, once again, to take his advice and build upon it - do the same.  If there is something productive worth doing, go for it.  Concentrate on strengthening those values most lacking and no matter what the sceptics or critics say, it will succeed with flying colours!

And watch that film: Triggermen.  Three guesses how I stumbled across it!

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I suppose my reasons for beginning writing these blogs were not entirely to share observations.  To a certain extent I had to prove to myself that this was something I could do.  It became a target to reach - the next step along the road of writing.

What road am I walking down?  That’s easy, it’s the same as you and it’s, rather tweely, labelled Memory Lane.  Here’s how I view it…

Memory Lane is a blank canvas up front, a faint outline of a road, but with no real ideas about what is up ahead.  You can peer back over your shoulder, but you have to be called to.  It could be a sound: I’ve been listening this week to the strains of music I had buried long ago, but the sound of NKOTB and suddenly I’m looking back at the terrace of houses that spanned my early years and my sister’s T-shirt with the boy band plastered on.  That’s how Memory Lane works.

So, I’ve been wandering along this complicated road, building up memories even over the last few days.  I was ecstatic that one of my students received a medal for her violin playing, and all of a sudden, over my shoulder, I’m looking at my older sister bringing home her first trophy for her singing performance.  That’s at the house with a 9 on the door - fitting really as it’s her lucky number.

The really odd thing is when those two friends, Vu and Deja, call you back.  That can throw out all awareness of what stage of Memory Lane you’re on.  And when they call, you are instantly back with them, even if you can’t see what house you’re next to.

I’m taking steps in my writing, steps that will undoubtedly led towards the developments of more structures on the edge of Memory Lane.  I hope they will be good structures, pleasing and constructive, like little Dutch windmills or maybe a school to teach people from my own experiences.  Everyone’s Memory Lane is crowded with different buildings, and different weathers.  I have a few houses that, as I look back on them, are overshadowed by a black cloud, while others - even those right next door - are sitting in eternal sunshine.  But each time I look back, there is a little more of that silver “experience” lining glowing around even the blackest clouds.

The slightly crazy, but comically genius, series Psych posted today asking about how long you’ve known you best friend for.  And so, with the aid of Facebook, I took another peek back at all the other streets of the same name that crossed and joined my own Memory Lane.  It’s true, “lane” gives a misleading impression because in places it becomes Memory Highway, Motorway, even: Intersection.  Those of you who have been press-ganged into reading this - that is to say: those who REALLY know me! - look back and see how often our Memory Lanes entwine.

So, here I am, waltzing - well, not actually waltzing because I don’t know how to, more sort of Stomping! - up the street and into the unknown.  Those of you who have ever taken the more scenic roads will know what I mean when I talk about there being obstacles - an occasion heading into Robin Hood’s Bay on the non-tourist route and encountering a tractor on the 24% one way road, springs to mind.

This year will hopefully see a number of firsts for me, like my violinist.  First time a student has taken gold, first time I’ve ever written a blog, first time I’ve been on committees, and - hopefully and very excitingly - the first time I’ve been published…  Watch this space!

I’m not going to follow the tweedium (new word, invented to combine tedium with the trite tweeness that inevitably accompanies it!) of others and tell you to make this a year of firsts like I hope mine will be.  If you have a comfort zone, why should you shatter it?  Remember, we’re always building new things on Memory Lane, make sure they’re things you’ll be happy to look back on.

I’ll see you when our Lane’s [next] converge!

Smiley, Happy, McEwan!

I’m fairly new at all this “blogging”, in my day it was done in pen and ink and usually started with the words “Dear Diary”, in the hope that someone would read them in the future as well as the desperate wish that those ridiculous secrets you shared with your paper-bound best friend would never rise to the surface…

Yet here I am.

This is not set to be an account of my day, nor a list of all that I hope to achieve in life - although, undoubtedly, they will appear in here, as they are what makes me: me - it is an observation on this busy humdrum life that so many of us regard as nothing short of a race to climb highest or live fastest.  I live in a small town that is called Home, remote and distant to so many people, in fact we are quite often missed from the map.  It doesn’t distress me, I love that it is predominantly unaffected by the turning cogs of time that threaten to steal away all aspects of artistic nature in favour of the compromise that sells.  But in spite of its steady nature, the clock is still ticking here.  Today, as I am looking out of my small window there are no clouds, just an endless mass of blue.  Summer, at long last, has arrived meaning that I have spent much of the morning lounging out in the garden enjoying the exciting tingling sunshine gives you, and planning trips to the nearby beach which is a four mile expanse of white sand almost undiscovered and a well kept secret of the local people.  I miss paddling in the water like I used to as a child, and now that I have returned to the sea I am looking forward to splashing out into the salty waters once again.

I’m a nostalgic person with the hope that what has been my past will help me build my future, and inevitably there are echoes of my younger years in all that I do - my writings, my music and my artwork.  I’m an avid poster on a local forum where, contrary to what the other posters may believe it is not my aim to antagonise people, it was brought to my attention how lucky I was simply to be me.  I’m hoping to share the secrets of some of the fortunate events and pass on some humour and insight into the happenings of my own idyllic life.

I got a phone call yesterday, not a thing unheard of, even in this corner of the world, that began me thinking about something I had taken for granted - a smile.  It costs nothing and yet it is worth more than any financial price.  The throwaway comment that was made was that “I could smile today”.  So I started thinking: what is a smile worth?  People on the street hardly ever offer me one, although my intrinsically optimistic and bubbly nature means that I can’t help but smile at people.  It’s true, I am perhaps too happy for some individuals.  As a singing teacher I am in the bizarre position of being able to tell people that they have to smile - something any of my students will tell you I go on and on about, to lift the tone and help the flowing of the song.  Sometimes it works better than others…
“I know you’re singing about someone who’s just died, but you’ve got to smile or the song dies too!”
I wonder, from time to time what my students think about my smiling obsession, but they all agree that it makes the music sound 100% better, and since that’s what they pay me for they have to smile.

Is it really true that a smile requires less muscles than a frown, or that extending your middle finger requires even less again?  I imagine it is one of those over sentimental anecdotes that some student spend thousands of pounds to discover.  To me it begs the question: who really cares?  If, of those three things a smile is the only constructive thing, then smile.

I have my own little idea that if you smile the world will always be brighter.  It’s never failed me, but plenty of people have delighted in telling me that it has failed them!  Miserable gits, I think they just don’t smile in the right way.  Sure, any fool can raise the corners of their mouth but how many can really radiate that sunshine glow and warm tingle from one soul to another that a smile is really about?

Try it.