Give Away Your Smile
Working in the welfare business (is it a business, anyway?) you come across with stories that are terrifying, scary and make you question why disease and bad luck happen to people causing a lot of pain, unhappiness and confusion in the end. This thought ultimately leads you to the point where you have to ask yourself who is in charge of distributing “fate” and who disposes of us?
Life writes all sorts of stories.
If it is up to me, it is life. Life writes all sorts of stories, both happy and sad, both cold and warm. Some say life is random and that is very true, otherwise life wouldn’t possess the colorful pattern we love it for. I hate to watch some people abandon themselves and their life to despair, but on the other who the heck do I think I am to be jugdemental.
Dealing with a difficult situation like being confronted with disease or a blow of fate differs from person to person and there is nothing I can do, except for offering a shoulder to lean on and giving hope. One way to go for it is smiling.
Here is a particularly great approach on how valuable a smile can be for people who are desperately in need of it. I stumbled upon this piece of text via a person who worked in a cancer treatment center for children. I translated the text into English, since I could only find the German version and thought that these are bits of wisdom we can’t possibly neglect the English speaking world from.
A Smile
A smile doesn’t cost anything and yet brings so much.
It enriches the recipient and the donator.
It might just be short, but its remembrance often is everlasting.
Nobody is rich enough to do without it.
And nobody is too poor in order to not afford it.
You can neither buy nor ask for it, neigher rent nor steal it, since it only has a value once it is given.
Nobody is more in need of a smile than the one who hasn’t one to spare.
Ein Lächeln
Ein Lächeln kostet nichts und bringt doch so viel.
Es bereichert den Empfänger und den Geber.
Es ist vielleicht nur kurz, doch die Erinnerung daran oft unvergänglich.
Keiner ist so reich, um darauf verzichten zu können.
Und keiner ist zu arm, daß er es sich nicht leisten könnte.
Man kann es weder kaufen noch erbitten, noch leihen oder stehlen, denn es hat erst dann einen Wert, wenn es verschenkt wird.
denn niemand braucht so sehr ein Lächeln, wie der, der keins mehr übrig hat.
As an Austrian ambulance man, you are not allowed to give any medication, but one of the things you’re always entitled to give is motivation. In any form whatsoever.
Today, and this is the reason I’m posting this, I took a incurably sick man home to spend the last days of his life around his family. This is really moving and gets under your skin.
:)
Looks like I have to agree on your FUNDAMENTAL argument. This is the way to go in life in good and bad times, although I can understand that somebody just doesn’t feel like laughing at some point in his/her life, but smiling is considered as a cure :) Laughing is even better, if you ask me. :)