The Opportunity Game

A Thousand Words from Ted Chung on Vimeo.

Each time that I watch this video, I feel my deep ambivalence about making intimate connections with strangers. Intellectually, it feels like a wonderful idea. However, when I’m walking outside and someone I don’t know nears me, it takes all of my courage to look them directly in the eye and smile at them. My fear of rejection is so great that I don’t want to risk even a moment of rejection for the possibility of connection. And yet I do. Most times, the other people happily return my smile. They have no idea how much I felt I just risked in offering a simple smile.

And what is a “simple smile”? It turns out that there are several different types of smiles. A “Duchenne smile” (named after the French doctor Guillaume Duchenne who studied facial expressions) is considered to be an authentic smile as it involves the contractions of both the voluntary muscles around the mouth and the involuntary muscles on the sides of our eyes. This signals a rush of genuine spontaneous positive feeling on the part of the person smiling.  A “non Duchenne smile” involves only the voluntary contraction of our mouth muscles and thus can be perceived to be a more superficial or manipulative expression.

Given how much I can fear the rejection of someone simply passing me by, it’s likely that I am offering a “non-Duchenne smile” upon their approach. And yet, I often am greeted with a “Duchenne smile response”. What this says to me is that people truly do want to connect even if their face doesn’t always mirror their deepest desires.

What if most people are just like me and are afraid to take to the first step? What if we all would love to be smiled at and genuinely welcomed by everyone we meet during the day? Acknowledged for simply being present to one another rather than being greeted and welcomed in order to make a sale.

For thirty years, every morning during commute traffic, Joseph Charles, “The Waving Man” stood on the corner in front of his house on Martin Luther King Boulevard and Oregon Street in Berkeley, CA with his signature large yellow glove and daily waved to and wished commuters and pedestrians a good day while telling them to “Keep smiling!” Whenever I passed him in the morning it was impossible to resist his good humor and joy at connecting with me. He definitely got a “Duchenne smile” in return from me. When he died at the age of 92 his simple acts of good will were noted not only in Berkeley but throughout the nation.

For me, the most poignant moment in “A Thousand Words” is when the guy notices that the woman is looking at him and quickly turns away. I have done that so often. I make up that he didn’t want her to think that he was flirting with her. And yet, as we find out later in the film, she is surreptitiously very interested in him. I have turned away because the moment has often felt like it was too much. I felt like I would burst with the excitement of being seen as well as my hope to be known in a silent interchange.

Turning away became so habitual in my earlier life that I still can do it without thinking. The gift of this film for me is to remind me to stay present long enough to connect to a stranger, even if it is only for one moment. Most likely, that will be the extent of our interaction. Should a need arise to talk, we can do that. However, what is most important is that I have opened myself and allowed myself to be vulnerable thus creating one small opening in the world for another soul to be known and seen.

Where do you turn away?

What allows you to stay?

Notice how many times you’ve smiled at others today. What was the impact of the smile on you and on the others?

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