Sunday, July 7, 2013

Smiling in Winco (and why you should do it)

The other week, I went to Winco and there was this lady pushing a cart. A little girl next to her, whom I assume was her daughter, reached up to take her hand. She grabbed it for a moment and the mom shook it off, looking extremely miserable. The little girl just looked up at her and looked so, SO sad while her mom just continued walking, not even looking down at her.
And after months of feeling pretty okay and happy and like I have control of my life, I felt like the world was so much sadder than I ever thought it was before.
I walked through Winco after that just hoping I'd see a happy face there. And, I mean, it's Winco, not Disneyland, so I wasn't expecting pure joy or anything like that. But maybe just a small smile after finding the perfect bananas or a slight laugh when the person you just passed made a joke about the meat or just... something. I just needed something to show me that the world wasn't so sad.
And I didn't get that. Instead I saw couples yelling at each other over which oatmeal to get and husband and wife walking ten feet away from each other and grown men making fun of their teenage sons who kept begging them to not do this is public. 

By the time I got back to my car, I was so sad it was hard for me to breathe. And I know that sounds ridiculous but I'm also the girl who cried during The Incredibles once, so it's not like it takes a lot to push me over the edge.
And since then, I haven't really figured out how to forget about this. 

It's like, I'm there one second having this great time with my great friends, and the next second my mind is like, "No wait Maren remember Winco?" and suddenly my heart hurts.
There's just so much sadness in the world that I can't fix and I don't know how to just accept that. With my ridiculous and constant need to help people and give advice and make sure people are happy, I don't know how to deal when I can't do it all.
And then it hit me. 

I'm one of those people. 
While I'm walking through Winco looking for a smiling face, I'm not smiling. If there was someone else walking through Winco right then noticing all the sad things I was noticing and praying to see one happy person, I wasn't that person for them. I was just another sad face. 
And maybe this is what they mean when they talk about the domino effect.
Maybe all we need to change is ourselves. Maybe I don't actually need to fix everything, maybe I just need to be that one smiling face for the other people out there like me. (Except I'm starting to think I'm just insane, I dunno.) 

But really. Maybe that's it.
Maybe if you just smile you'll make someone else smile and then you're not the only one in the room smiling. 


I guess... I guess I don't know if this is what I really learned from this, or at all what I was supposed to learn. I've figured out a few other things about myself because of this too, actually. And I don't know which thing I learned was "right" or anything. But I'm just going to put this out there because if I go to Winco and you see me there, I want you to know that I need you to smile at me so that I don't feel consumed with all the sadness in the world for a week after.
That's all.