Ever since the late legendary singer Scott McKenzie, in 1967, sang about placing a flower in your hair when you visit San Francisco, the city by the bay has been known for her touchy, feely atmosphere.
We should know since we lived there for over 20 years.
Touch and feel all you want as long as you smile at your neighbor and strangers alike.
San Francisco is just one big smile.
Yes this city will make you smile. 1960's style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I0vkKy504U
That is how it communicates. So clearly, deeply and sweetly.
Clear communication is essential to the fluidity of life.
Nothing communicates better and with more mobility than a cell phone.
If you use your cell phone often, chances are, you're spending over $80 every month to communicate on it.
At the informative site quicken.com, they educate that the average cell phone bill in the U.S. runs about $50 to $60 a month.
We need our cell phones.
There is another way that people can communicate without saying a word and utilize a skill that costs nothing and you can use it as often as you like.
In fact, the more you use it, the better.
That of course is to smile.
Before you think this is just a touchy feely story, there are proven health benefits to smiling.
As reported in the Huffington Post, “In a 2012 study published in the journal Psychological Science, University of Kansas psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman studied 170 participants who were told to hold chopsticks in their mouths in three formations, making them smile to various degrees without realizing it, after performing a stressful task. The experiment revealed that subjects who smiled the biggest with the chopsticks experienced a substantial reduction in heart rate and quicker stress recovery compared to those whose expressions remained neutral.”
They also add, “A 2004 Penn State University study found that authentic smiles shared by employees in the service industry influenced their impressions on customers in a positive way. Smiling employees came across as more likable and friendly, and customers left the interactions feeling more satisfied about their overall experience.”
We are smiling to read about those studies.
In our circle, we know of a friend who remembers that when he was young, a female friend wanted to introduce him to one of her girlfriends.
He didn’t like setups and had very low expectations about that future meeting.
Out of politeness he decided to go, knowing in the back of his mind, this is going to be an intro and exit situation. He had his strategy all planned out.
Then he met her friend.
He was absolutely shocked. Truly.
She was gorgeous. More important than her beautiful looks was her smile.
You’ve heard the expression that a smile can light up a room? Well hers could light up quite a few rooms at the same time. He felt the sun always shined on her because she was genuinely smiling all of the time.
They eventually dated and for the time they were together, had a really nice time.
Now for another health checkup.
As posted in benefitsbridge.unitedconcordia.com, “Smiling has well-documented social benefits. A genuine smile can make you seem more likable, attractive, intelligent and even trustworthy. But did you know that smiling more often—regardless of your mood—can improve your health and help you live longer?”
We thought so. We hoped so.
As we look to film, past and present, we can think focus on two of many women whose smile could not only light up a room, but a large movie screen as well.
Farrah Fawcett was an American actress, model, and artist.
grapplingstars.com femcompetitor.com writer, ABC Television photo
A four-time Emmy Award nominee and six-time Golden Globe Award nominee, Farrah rose to international fame when she posed for her iconic red swimsuit poster, which became the best-selling pin-up poster in history.
She was probably best known for starring as the private investigator Jill Munroe in the first season of the television series Charlie's Angels (1976–1977).
In 1996, she was ranked No. 26 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV stars of All-Time"
That picture of her smiling face in that red swimsuit had to be one of the more memorable swimwear photos of all time.
Today, when it comes to gorgeous actresses there are smiles a plenty.
That makes us smile.
Now this could come down to a very subjective popularity contest. You have your favorites and we certainly have ours. Both are beautiful, true?
Blake Lively is known for starring as Serena van der Woodsen in the CW drama television series Gossip Girl (2007–2012).
She also starred in a number of films, including The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), The Town (2010), Green Lantern (2011), Savages (2012), The Age of Adaline (2015), The Shallows (2016) and A Simple Favor (2018).
When she smiles, it literally jumps off of the screen and into our waiting arms.
We can’t get enough of watching Blake do her thing, which is to smile in abundance.
Well I don’t feel like smiling all of the time you say.
We understand. Sometimes we just wake up on the wrong side of the bed when someone does something that truly ruins our day.
Somehow we need to find a way to smile anyway. Even if it is forced.
It is still provides positive outcomes.
At the widely respected emotional and mental health source Psychology Today, they smile, “It turns out, according to V.S. Ramanchandran in his book A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, we're capable of mounting two different kinds of smiles, one genuine and the other forced, which are in fact generated in two separate parts of the brain.
They look different, these two smiles, which is why we can always tell one from the other with ease. To produce a genuine smile we must genuinely feel like smiling. To smile at a stranger in a meaningful way, then, requires we muster some kind of real feeling for them—that we care about someone we don't know, if only in a small way.”
This places us in the category of doing what is good for society as well as ourselves. Sometimes we just need to put our best face forward. Even if it forced.
Remember this song, “Come People Now, Smile On Your Brother”.
The Youngbloods were an American rock band consisting of Jesse Colin Young (vocals, bass), Jerry Corbitt (guitar), Lowell Levinger, nicknamed "Banana" (guitar and electric piano), and Joe Bauer (drums). Despite receiving critical acclaim, surprisingly most of us feel they never achieved the widespread popularity that they truly deserved.
Their only U.S. Top 40 entry was "Get Together".
What a magnificent entry it was and always will be. It is a heart rendering classic.
Maybe some of the lyrics will help.
Love is but a song to sing
Fear's the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry
Though the bird is on the wing
And you may not know why
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now
Some may come and some may go
We shall surely pass
When the one that left us here
Returns for us at last
We are but a moment's sunlight
Fading in the grass
That song sure makes us smile. In some ways sadly. There was something so beautiful and spiritually powerful about music in the 1960s.
Please try an experiment. Listen to this song and smile, while it lasts on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRbTvoxRNxM
Thank you Young Bloods. Thank you San Francisco. Past and present.
We feel like deliriously smiling.
~ ~ ~
grapplingstars.com femcompetitor.com writer, pexels.com-Matthew-T-Rader-photo
https://www.moneysavingpro.com/cell-phone-plans/comparing-us-and-uk-bills/
https://www.quicken.com/home-budget-cost-living-reality-check
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/smiling-benefits_n_6598840
https://benefitsbridge.unitedconcordia.com/top-7-health-benefits-smiling/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrah_Fawcett
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Lively
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Youngbloods
