Guest Blogger Crystal Collier, Cheese and Children
I'm so excited to feature Crystal Collier on the blog today. She is one of the authors who contributed to "A Circle of Sisters" which should be coming out around April. I met Crystal through a writing friend and I really enjoy reading her blog http://crystalcollier.blogspot.com. Today she's wrote up a little something about "Celebrating Small and Simple Things." Here's Crystal!
Cheese and
Children
What do you think of when you hear the word, “Cheese”? Yummy
milk products? Picture taking? General silliness?
For me, cheese = smile = happiness.
We moved to NYC when my daughter was only a year old. She had
absolutely no fear of people. She’d walk up to any stranger in the subway and
take their hand—while I suffered heart palpitations. Even though it put me on
edge, I had to appreciate that my child faced the world with such boldness,
that she saw goodness in everyone. She had such a sincere love for people that
she couldn’t help but spread it.
And the miracle? People responded. Hardened New Yorkers
softened when she looked at them with those big eyes and that sweet smile. They
constantly commented on how adorable she was, and everywhere we went, a trail
of smiles followed.
Recently I’ve been studying about happiness and the power of
a smile. It is a scientific truth that smiles pass from person to person, just
like yawns. They’re contagious. In one experiment I watched, a well-timed smile
even prompted the recipients to stop and help someone who’d dropped some books.
Can you imagine that? A smile inciting the inherent goodness in people?
According to Gary L. Wenk, a Ph.D. and Professor
of Psychology & Neuroscience, a smile (fake or
real), pulls on the thin bones in the face and causes increased blood flow
through the frontal lobes of the brain. When that happens, the body releases an
increase of dopamine—which is a naturally occurring “happy drug.”
Believe it or
not, you are dosing yourself with happiness every time you smile—and inspiring
others to do the same. Maybe that’s the real secret behind children being so
much happier than adults. They smile more.
Seems like my daughter had
life all figured out at the age of one. Guess I should try to be more like her,
eh? Would you like to try the experiment with me? Let’s see if we can’t make
the world a better place, one “cheese” at a time.