By Ittoop Panikulam
Mumbai, Oct. 7, 2021: I do not know if any person, other than Divine Word Father Joe Francis who has perfectly answered the World Smile Day Call on October 1. One sure ray of goodness Joe daily spreads is his unique smile.
At 70, Joe, as he is popularly called, has practically forgotten everything and everyone in his life, including his home and the names of his best friends. What stays on as his personal signature is his unique smile.
He has forgotten that he and I had worked together as members of the same staff at Nemi, Rome, for the renewal of sisters, brothers and priests. He does not remember that he was a valued spiritual director at the Divine Word Seminary, Pune, and a novice master in Kenya. Pointing at a dog, once I asked him to name what he was looking. He gave me a smile but was unable to remember the word the animal. Not even my suggestion of a ‘patty’ the Malayalam word for dog, could tickle his memory.
Whenever he gets stuck, his curious usual response is: “I love you.” When the right answer does not kick on, a few pre-recorded words and sentences mechanically get uttered by him, even a few lines of some old songs, like ‘Mera jeevan, kora kakaj.” Whether he is right, wrong or whatever, he does one thing, practically all the time, he smiles — a natural, friendly, warm, effortless, guileless and childlike smile. As he smiles, for a second, everything else gets forgotten and all those around him too are held in a circle of smiles.
He believed like me that life is created in happiness, out of happiness, with happiness and for happiness. We were sure that God’s ultimate aim was, is and will be happiness for all. And it is the creative genius of the God of happiness who conceived and gave birth to the idea of the sparkle of a smile, in all its funny forms and various shades.
With every smile, the happiness button gets turned on and the faces display it for all to see. Each smile is a unique marvel; I would consider it a greater than the Seven Wonders of the World. Wonders are created. Not smiles. You do not design, plan and choreograph a smile. When it arrives on your lips and stays there for a little while, you know, smile has come and found its home.
You can’t cut and paste a smile. A true smile on the lips comes from a distant source, the heart. When a minuscule glad message is received, evaluated and happily approved, the heart plays its little tricks and a smile blooms on our lips. If you want to smile more often, store up happiness in your hearts, like Joe.
The life-script theory speaks of how we begin to write down our unplanned autobiography from the early days of our lives. We begin making choices often based on what we receive as the payoff from significant others. Once the decisions are made by us and the secret system installed, we begin to live those choices for good, unless transformational events bring about changes in our lives. Otherwise we are bound to unconsciously repeat them. This also happens when we set up our smiley windows early in our lives. I believe the introduction to the story of Joe’s smile began when he was a tiny tot.
The connecting dotes were uniquely made by him a long time ago. It all began probably as an embryo and fetus when he was immersed for more than nine months in a pool of pleasure, in a climate of wordless enjoyment. The little form of his life kept on swimming merrily in a leisurely style, almost lost in blissful self-forgetfulness.
The skin to skin touch and the tender massage of the membranes kept on adding delight to the new one, day and night. Drinking those heavenly juices in the earliest of his days, the seed of foreknowledge of a paradise of happiness got sown in him. If he knew how to express himself, he would have been all smiles already there.
His mother would have waited for his first maiden smile. When it happened, she would have come to know what one of the best of smiles in the world is going to be. A bit of that smile should be similar, more or less, to his mother’s and father’s smiles as well. However, it was not a total duplicate or a repeat! That would not have tallied right with the original plan of the author of all unique and individual smiles. There was, is and will be no other smile exactly like that of Joe’s!
Smiles are exterior displays of something waking up deep in our hearts. We know that smiles do not have independent existence of their own. We shall not blame our lips, not even our gloomy faces, for a poor show of our smiles. Simply put, a smile is not its own maker. Smiles weaned off from the heart, is a fake show. It would be farce, false, crooked, bogus, synthetic and sham. We shall not tie up an inner mask around our hearts and expect a transparent smile on our faces! If they are born of love, smiles play magic on spectators’ faces, as it happens when we are with Joe.
For cultivating more attractive smiles, we need to journey to its source, love which works like chemistry, mysteriously producing a few happiness enzymes. Love is physics, an invisible energy that transcends matter to give out joy-filled smiles. Love is maths, it keeps on multiplying smiles. Love is gravity; its pull of attraction towards cheerfulness is real.
Love is light; a new kind of light adds a glow to our faces. Love is power; it can conquer the world around us, as in the case of a Mona Lisa smile. It is infinite; no one has found a way to measure love or happiness. Smiles are like butterflies, carrying happiness from one person to another. At times I feel the smiles of Joe move about like fireflies, a little shining light even in dark times and harsh places in life. The day all humans stop smiling, won’t it be right and fitting that the whole world goes hiding in a tomb!!
May the gift of our smiles as in the case of Joe Francis live for ever.
(Divine Word Father Ittoop Panikulam is a spiritual director and counsel staying at Dhyan Kutir in Andheri East, Mumbai.)