Michelle Wong ’19 | Staff Writer
Sometimes, in the freezing cold for this now-adjusted Californian, I get all giddy inside and almost cry at how beautiful the passing moment just was. They smiled back! Oh man, this is a great day.
If you are one of the Smith students I’ve smiled at in the past couple of weeks since I started and shot one back right at me, hello! This is me. Thank you for your gift.
Given the nature of our institution, Smith culture was molded through our haste to something or somewhere, our loss of faith in our community’s ability to care for one another and our stress, which prevents us from even thinking about offering any sort of love to someone else. For the past three years, I felt the same and unfortunately perpetuated these behaviors.
Why do we avoid making eye contact with people we sort of know? Why do we stay silent when there is an opportunity for acknowledgment? Why do we opt to avoid and detach from our community instead of breaking that cycle?
My process towards unlearning that culture began with understanding what it means to give and receive love to and from the self. (The Pisces in me believes the theory that there is no absolute self and that happiness anywhere is able to bring happiness elsewhere, but Smith culture makes this hard to believe.)
As a senior who has had some time to reflect on all the things I loved and didn’t love about Smith when I was abroad, I realized something: Smith needs more love.
I learned from a small book called “How To Love” by Thich Nhat Hanh that joy is cultivated first through acting with love towards yourself and then offering that capacity to love and the gift of joy to others with no expectation of return.
Coming from a family of immigrants that aren’t very well-versed in the notion of self-love, I now believe in making yourself a priority. I was always thinking about how I was affecting others and how others were affecting me but never about how I was affecting myself. Once I started keeping this in mind, I realized I had something to offer to others. Not needing reciprocation comes easily when you already have enough love for yourself — and that’s how I started smiling at strangers.
If you know how to take care of yourself, you will have the energy and love to take care of others. That doesn’t mean choosing to be a martyr or only being interested in yourself, but rather, it means finding a balance that works for you and maybe that person sitting in front of you in class (who you will not say hi to because that’s Smith for you).
I find myself asking: “Does this emotion/class/slice of pizza/act for another person serve me? No? Okay, gotta figure out how to let it go.” That’s the self-love checking in.
And then I ask myself as I pass others during the day: “Do I have enough love to offer right now?” And when I’m able to answer “yes” to that question, I choose the most simple and free but valuable gift: a smile. When I can’t, I know that I’m not giving enough love to myself and I should probably go do something that will recharge my capacity to offer love. (I like reading and writing poetry and playing video games at the Gaming Lab in Hillyer on Friday nights with other students of color in the computer science department.)
Sometimes when I try to smile at someone, the timing isn’t right and I miss them. Other times, the response is an awkward pull of the lips with no expression in the eyes. Yet, there have been many instances in which I’ve received a genuine, loving and bright smile back. Electric.
You might be wondering: Won’t it be kind of weird to smile at random people I don’t know? Or even worse, a person I sort of know and they don’t… smile back?
I encourage you to not worry about that and instead laugh because you can’t expect everyone to receive your gifts for whatever reason, and tell yourself: “Welp. On to the next!” And besides, a gift is only a true gift when nothing is expected in return. It is important that the smiles we offer to one another are true.
