The Courage to Smile

June 5, 2005

—Stargate SG-1 dialog, after a soldier is tortured

It’s been said that smiling—a universal communication—is interpreted as harmless because the teeth are weapons and smiling bears them in a way that shows they won’t be used to attack.

I don’t always feel like smiling. Sometimes I feel I’d rather use my teeth to chew off some deserving psychiatrist’s nuts (while I’m down there). I smile anyway—a great big smile, from the cheeks, using those muscles—it makes me feel better physically and emotionally. I find it also inspires those around me. In this way, the positivity of others is returned to me. I think of the Dalai Lama’s smiling face, so often seen on the covers of books.

I stopped giving up. That’s when I started to smile. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

I was very sick for fourteen years in my twenties.

I love rejection. Rejections after my first true love don’t quite feel the same.

Laughter is healing. It opens up the lungs and is an expression of voice. From meditation, we know the importance of breathing. From psychiatric treatment, we know the importance (to others) of not having a voice.

Since psychiatry judges the genetics of its patients, psychiatry seeks to stand between me and the love I may have for my children. Western science tends to focus upon the things we can control, whereas eastern religions for example seek to focus on the things we don’t. In a western interpretation, my children may inherit a disease from me. Without so many gadgets involved, research reveals a more loving interpretation: we are each independent yet connected spirits seeking our own truth and life experience, inevitably leading through compassion to peace, harmony and balance. We each live with mistakes, and not all of them may be reconciled within this lifetime.

It hurts when I breathe.

The wisdom of being a psychiatric patient in our culture is the wisdom of—the wisdom that comes with—devotion.

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