26 2 / 2010
Smile
Thirty seven sold items of clothing on EBay and two intensive Post Office trips later, I returned home to see the following piece of feedback on my profile:
“Delighted with cardi, speedy delivery!”
Now, you might think that this is atypical of EBay feedback, and you might be wondering why I am mentioning it at all. But there is something about the word ‘delighted’ in that sentence that, for me, conjures up an image of someone tearing open their packaged cardigan and being truly thrilled with what’s inside. I really don’t know where that image comes from, or why it makes me feel the way I do. It makes me want to wrap my faraway EBay feedbackee up in cotton wool and make sure no bad things ever happen to them.
Actually, it happens all the time. When I see people walking along the road smiling to themselves, when I see old people holding hands, when I see an act of kindness towards someone that no-one else is supposed to see.
To me, it feels like the antithesis (or the antidote?) to all of the bad things in the world. Watching a news bulletin, or reading the paper, would have us believe that the world is this awful mish-mash of amorality, violence, hatred, fundamentalism and antipathy. And yet, despite all of this, I can still sit in my car at a traffic lights and see someone walking along, grinning. Someone who has found a way to be happy, to believe that there is something worth smiling about. And it makes me want to cover their eyes, and shield them from all the bad things. Because I want to believe it too.
