Smiley

Does being happy make you smile, or does smiling make you happy?

The more accurate answer is that there are different types of happiness, and that some of them are at one end or the other of a possible causal relationship.

Since studying the question many years ago, I've found that smiling makes me happy, in the physical sense. (Serotonin blasts - whoah. Almost like sex on demand.) This however, never seems to be self-sustaining. So I regard it as a drug, which raises my state of happiness to a high, and which terminates in an inevitable depression. Your muscles can't smile forever... they will cramp. Try it.

I find it harder to think when I'm smiling, and easier when my face is in a neutral position. I'm also happier in the long-run, i.e. in a literally more sustainable fashion, when I'm thinking fastest, and so for me, being happy means keeping my face mostly in a neutral position.

However, whenever I socialise, for example in sales meetings, on dates, or when serving customers, I have to purposefully allow myself to be dumber, to think in a less sustainable fashion, to empathise with the short-term fancies of others, otherwise I can't smile naturally.

I always wonder what it would be like to forget how to turn off my dumb-mode. Then I'd just be smiley.

LOL

Yup. One day maybe they'll Ludovico me. Looking forward to it.