A SMILE IS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE BY Dramiga Herbert

2013-08-29 18:32:00
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Dramiga Herbert Dramiga Herbert



Did you know that all people around the world smile in the same language? Oh! Yes they do’. In my opinion before spoken languages came to be there was a smile, the oldest language on earth; it’s quiet and peaceful, it’s a real fountain of gladness, it’s the talk of the heart, a manifest of Allah’s abundant love in a stranger, it is a universal welcome and when meant sincerely it is heart soothing. We don’t necessarily need to say something to mean something. Our bodies carry millions of silent words that every other person understands, they speak for themselves. A smile is the language of love used mainly by the women, children and strangers who fear to speak

A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you are available at home and when you are at home, people want to come and say hullo to you even when they want to say nothings at all. It is that open gate of love into someone’s heart that says it all. The teeth are the sparkles of Angelic invitations to love and bond when we smile. A laugh is therefore an excited smile has burst the heart into music rhythms.

Look, you are wondering what to say and how to respond to your neighbor’s spoken language because you don’t know how to speak it. All you do is look into their eyes and their body gestures and match them up for a possible meaning. A good smile feels special and spiritual

An illustration of what I mean; this is what happens to me with this particular community daily. I have tried greeting them in all spoken languages I know and learnt from home, school and in the ordinary informal life. None seemed to click a single meaning, we didn’t understand one another. I guess they got me wrong and i got them all wrong too. All I heard were just voices without meanings and saw their lips move in rhythms. When i smiled and they smiled back, i knew we had a big deal in common. We kept talking in our smiles, shaking and feeling hands, keeping eye contacts fixed as if we were reading words, flashing thumbs up and eating words that didn't matter at all. The bottom line of it all was we got each other, we shared love, we shared a gift, we bonded and we wrote indelible notes in our hearts with those smiles.

You are in the vehicle winding through a bumpy, narrow and dusty community road recounting the bad memories of the day half a sleep and all you see through the windows of the car is spirited kids joyfully waving to you with no idea who you are, a great show of affection embedded in their smiles and you feel them touch your heart and all you have left is give back to them that same love

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing; Mother Teresa.



Dramiga Herbert

Freelance Columnist



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