Status: Complete | Finished <3
Smile
Smile
I don’t have a very exciting life, it is kind of boring. I can count the friends I have on the fingers of a single hand and I can’t remember the last time one of them invited me to go have a drink. I have never travelled across the ocean; I haven’t even left my little abandoned hometown in my forty years of living. I live in small apartment situated in the poorest neighborhood of my town. As a cashier, I don’t make enough money to afford a better place to live in. I barely have enough money to eat three meals a day and to pay my rent every month. But even though I’m poor in money, relationships and life adventures; I still feel like I’m the richest man in the entire world.
My routine is pretty much the same every day. I wake up at 6:00 am and take a quick shower. Then, I eat breakfast and dress up for work. It’s never really hard for me to decide what to wear since I’m pretty limited in clothes. Three pair of jeans and five shirts is all I have. But I don’t need more, I have nobody to impress. When the clock ticks 7:00am, I leave my place to go to work where I spend more than eight hours of my day. At the end of my shift, I come back home and eat dinner. I then read a little before going to bed. And everything starts all over the next day. That is what people assume is my routine. But there are things they don’t know about it. And those are the things that make me the richest man in the world.
People don’t know that every day, I would help this old lady cross the road because she can’t do it on her own. People surrounding me don’t know that every day, I offer my lunch to my young colleague who’s been kicked out of her house by her mother for being a lesbian. Society doesn’t know that every time I come back home from work, I offer some of my change to this woman and her daughter in the hopes that they will finally have enough money to send the little girl to school. Finally, they don’t know that I would help my neighbor carry her grocery bags all the way up to the tenth floor of our apartment building. All of these little actions remain a secret.
Why do I help all of those people you will ask? Why do I help them if I get nothing in return? That is where you’re all wrong. I do get something in return. And this something is not something you can use, touch or spend. It’s not something that will help you buy a good dinner. I get something that is worth more than all the money in the world, a little something that is more precious than the biggest diamond of the universe. What I get in return from helping those people is a smile. And it’s all I need to know that I’ve done something great, something meaningful. There’s nothing that is worth more than a smile. To me, nothing can make you richer than having people showing you their best smile after you’ve helped them. Because a smile is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. And those daily gifts I will carry them with me until the day I die.
My routine is pretty much the same every day. I wake up at 6:00 am and take a quick shower. Then, I eat breakfast and dress up for work. It’s never really hard for me to decide what to wear since I’m pretty limited in clothes. Three pair of jeans and five shirts is all I have. But I don’t need more, I have nobody to impress. When the clock ticks 7:00am, I leave my place to go to work where I spend more than eight hours of my day. At the end of my shift, I come back home and eat dinner. I then read a little before going to bed. And everything starts all over the next day. That is what people assume is my routine. But there are things they don’t know about it. And those are the things that make me the richest man in the world.
People don’t know that every day, I would help this old lady cross the road because she can’t do it on her own. People surrounding me don’t know that every day, I offer my lunch to my young colleague who’s been kicked out of her house by her mother for being a lesbian. Society doesn’t know that every time I come back home from work, I offer some of my change to this woman and her daughter in the hopes that they will finally have enough money to send the little girl to school. Finally, they don’t know that I would help my neighbor carry her grocery bags all the way up to the tenth floor of our apartment building. All of these little actions remain a secret.
Why do I help all of those people you will ask? Why do I help them if I get nothing in return? That is where you’re all wrong. I do get something in return. And this something is not something you can use, touch or spend. It’s not something that will help you buy a good dinner. I get something that is worth more than all the money in the world, a little something that is more precious than the biggest diamond of the universe. What I get in return from helping those people is a smile. And it’s all I need to know that I’ve done something great, something meaningful. There’s nothing that is worth more than a smile. To me, nothing can make you richer than having people showing you their best smile after you’ve helped them. Because a smile is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. And those daily gifts I will carry them with me until the day I die.