Smiley People Are Suspect | Perception Paradigms - Part 4

There is something else I've noticed returning from a psy festival because it's rather hard not to notice it. When you meet people back in "civilization" after such an eventful and mind-opening time, there is a loving readiness and willingness to smile. A LOT.

It's that moment when your eyes meet that of another and there is no preconception involved - it's just a natural way of acknowledging the other, whoever it might be.

I have noticed that wanting to smile at someone hardly ever works out, rather it's this way of letting go and remembering that we are all made out of the same cloth and the smile comes quite naturally.

It's amazing to see when a stranger returns a smile, and sometimes it carries a lot of weight. I have smiled at a lady in the train station after the last festival as we were passing each other within a busy crowd of people, and it was a superb communication exchange. It felt like we were both slightly amused about the degree of... hustle and bustle of all the people around and as if we had shared a secret insight just then, underscoring how slightly weird it is that we all think we have to hurry places when we could just take it slow and say hi to one another... All that - in one smile.

For hours after that I felt uplifted. And I get the sense that she also did though I never got to ask her.

But most of the time in the afterglow of a festival, when I'm back in my town, I have found that people generally respond to a smile with the oddest of looks on their face. Suspicion.

It seems like a self-protection mechanism, maybe mistaking my smile with them as a smile at them as if I were laughing at them. But there's nothing I can do about it, just keep going.

Then I smile at someone else and get a similar response, a slightly worried or puzzled look. I had it happen that people look at me as if I was an alien or something, being utterly stunned and almost shocked at what they saw. Not sure what that is about but in general when retunring from a smiley psy festival to the regular daily life environment where people hurry to appointments and their work, where they shop groceries and take the kids to indoctrination facilities... it feels like smiley people are generally regarded as suspect.

Which I had often taken the wrong way in the past, getting slightly discouraged or even bitter about it. Nowadays I just let it go and try not to think about the why. And then I find someone out there who genuinely returns a smile being thankful for that brief moment of acknowledgment in empathy.

Maybe it's tied to our culture or nation, but I feel more smiles would go a long way to tear down the artificial walls of separation between people. And when I am with my psy crew and we all throw a smile someone's way that individual often has to smile when he notices just how much he tried to not smile backuntil he couldn't resist - in which case everyone wins, also those who were just impartial onlookers to the situation still able to take something home with them from that energetic exchange...