The
story of the boy with the permanent smile touched me and taught me
a lot.
During a communication class, the lecturer was telling his students
that everyone had a story in them. "Pick any person off the street"
he said, "and interview them well and you will hear a wonderful
and touching human story." The students challenged the lecturer
saying that he was exaggerating. He challenged them back to open the
door of the lecture hall and bring in the first person they found
who was willing to be interviewed, and he would show them what he
meant. They opened the door and a newsboy, Dave, with a grin on his
face was just passing by: he agreed to be interviewed before the class.
For
a few minutes the lecturer asked him some questions about his job:
how he dealt with traffic and with the kind of people that he met
in his work. Some would begrudge him the price of the paper while
others would tell him to keep the change. Then the lecturer stopped
for a moment and said gently, "Dave, we've been talking for the
past five minutes and you haven't stopped smiling once. Could you
tell me why?"
"Well,
if you really want to know," replied Dave, "I will tell
you. I was born Bungi, I had a harelip. My parents were very upset
and when one of those visiting medical teams came to our place I was
operated on. However, something went wrong in the operation and I
was left with a permanent smile on my face! No matter how I try I
cannot take it off. Some people think it is marvelous or funny but
I tell you it is no joke. How do you tell people who you are, or,
how you are crying inside, when there is a permanent smile on your
face?"
You
could hear a pin drop in that lecture hall. The tortured soul of a
sensitive human being was being revealed for a moment. The message
had come across that people may not be what they appear to be. They
may never have had a chance to know who they were or to show who they
were to other people.
During
Advent the figure of John the Baptist stands out very clearly as someone
who knew who he was and whose face showed exactly how he felt. "When
a feeling of expectance began to grow among the people who were beginning
to think that John may be the Christ, he declared openly before them
all. 'I baptize you with water, but someone is coming, someone who
is more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to undo the strap of
his sandals.'" In another place he said, "I must decrease
and HE must increase." "I am not the Messiah but I have
come to prepare the way for him." From this secure self identity
he could say who he was and tell others what they should be.
In
my experience of listening to peoples' stories most people have trouble
being who they truly are. Many of us have been told as children that
anger, jealousy or sexual thoughts and feelings were sinful. We came
to believe that if we experienced such emotions we ourselves were
bad. Nobody can love what is bad, so we pretend that we are someone
other than who we are - we put a permanent smile or a permanent frown
on our faces: or we take up the pose of the funny fellow, the wise
guy, or the authority who cannot be questioned. We tend to become
doughnuts running around our true selves and never being at home at
our own centers. We often tend to use prayer to prop up our facade
of virtue or wisdom or power. We pray for the things and the achievements
that we think we need to fill up the real emptiness that we feel inside
ourselves.
Meditation
is a different way of prayer. By trying to be still, to be at home
within ourselves, we come to realize that we are basically good. We
may have strong emotions or feelings but they in themselves do not
make us bad - they only make us who we are. We are called to be responsible
in dealing with them and this is where the question of goodness or
badness comes in. Meditation is a way of being at home with our true
selves, the shadow as well as the light. From this honest self acceptance
there comes a strength from the center to become fully what we are
called to really be.
