[Editor’s note: this was originally published on a different blog, Smile In Any Language, which I was active on from 2010-2011 before moving over to The Owl Hours. After consolidating my blogs in 2026, those posts found a new home here.]
Hello, and welcome to my blog Smile In Any Language. My name is Mara, and I first started blogging about a year ago. But I felt like I needed a fresh start, and what better time to begin again than the summer between middle school and high school? Tomorrow I’m officially graduating (or as they say, being promoted), and then there’s summer! This blog is going to track my summer and freshman year of high school, and I’ll be updating it once a week, writing about random things – something I baked, what we did at school, a musical piece, a short philosophical piece or story fragment… anything that comes to mind, really. My only rule for myself is that I blog.
Every week.
I suppose you’ll get to know me throughout the process if you don’t know me in real life all ready, so I’m not going to go into detail about my personality. I’ll explain the title of the blog instead. You see, earlier this year, I heard a statistic. It said that the average child laughs four hundred times a day while the average adult laughs – wait for it – only ten times a day. Now, I’m not sure whether the study was counting every single “ha” as a laugh, but the giant number gap really hit me. I resolved that I would always laugh as much as possible and actively look for reasons to laugh from then on. And you know what? I’m a much happier person because of it. Please keep in mind that this year, my parents got a divorce and my grandpa died. But by consciously trying to smile and laugh every day and appreciate life, I really enjoyed a lot of parts of the year.
Today, I caught my reflection while I was smiling. Smiling at me was a teenage girl with frizzy brown hair, glasses, and braces. Yep, I need braces so that I’ll have a “pretty smile.” But to be entirely honest, has anyone ever seen an ugly smile? All smiles make everyone look better, because when people smile, their faces seem to light up. Even if the smile itself isn’t aesthetically beautiful, it means that the person is experiencing happiness. And happiness is good.
Heck, happiness is the best thing on the planet.
Anyone around the world can smile, and you’ll know that they’re happy. It doesn’t matter if they’re a boy or a girl, if they’re from Antarctica or Africa, or if they don’t speak the same language as you. They could speak French, Spanish, Tagalog, Japanese, Swahili, Russian, Hawaiian, or any other language or dialect you can think of. You might not be able to understand a word they say, but you’d know they were happy if they smiled. Smiles are universal. So is laughter.
So why did I name this blog Smile In Any Language? Firstly, because I could. Secondly, because it’s my goal in life (or one of them) to be a happy person. I’m not going to start a happiness project like Gretchen Rubin, but I am going to try to make conscious decisions every day that will lead to happiness in the immediate and/or far-off future.
Well… I think that’s enough about my happiness obsession. Though since my family has a history of depression, I suppose it’s a rather healthy thing to be obsessed with. So… yeah. That’s all I wanted to write about for now. See you next week!
All that I’m after is a life full of laughter – Life After You, by Daughtry
Until next week,
Mara
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