About that “aha”

Photo by Chris Lynch on Unsplash

On an early morning walk, my mind was trashing all the beauty around me - with worry. About everything. STOP!

STOP halts uninvited texts, but doesn’t seem to work so well with uninvited thoughts.

A monkey mind and a fast-beating heart. Suddenly, an “aha!” springs out of nowhere and I begin breathing more deeply. Oh my, such a relief.

Wait, an ethereal “aha” springs out of nowhere? Really? Not exactly. I smiled. Yep, that’s it. I smiled. Cheap therapy. In a nutshell, “Smiling can trick your brain into believing you’re happy which can then spur actual feelings of happiness.”

Well, hot damn; I like it. This is an internal trickster I can live with.

Your omnivorous reader (that would be me) picked up a little scientific nugget somewhere and went with it - a nugget that morphed into the seed germinating as my “aha.” (Hey, these itsy-bitsy nuggets are scattered all around us. Pebbles of wisdom just waiting to be found and to further enrich our paths as humans. Keep an eye out.)

Oh, wanting to know more about the anatomy of an “aha?” Hey, you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. First, up come the sides of your mouth. Yes, a little bit further up. Suddenly, a full-blown smile has been reached. Not ridiculously hard, is it?

Now, here’s the really odd part. I’m patting myself on the back for remembering the impact of smiling. My outlook is feeling a bit more bright. Well, OK, then, I can probably quit smiling now. NOT. I couldn’t. I’m not kidding. My lips did not want to return to their usual horizontal position – no, they did not. So, here I am, walking along with a smile literally plastered on my face. That smile took on a life of its own. I no longer seemed to be in charge. And for a putative control freak, this particular situation was one I could happily live with. I mean, couldn’t you?

So I went with it. I mean, who wants to fight with herself over a smile? Not me. I can be flexible (on occasion.) And so I was.

Eventually, my smile subsided on its own. I don’t think I noticed though because I was really enjoying my walk at that point…