I saw a Stringray flying over at the Aquarium of the Pacific.
It’s nostrils and mouth, with creepy looking teeth looked like a smiley.
I thought it looked like it was wearing lipstick too.
Ruth: Also looks like she’s wearing a string of pearls!
Found this rock in a landscape
(West Branch, Michigan)
July 6, 2011
Smiley Lady Ruth’s TEDTalk: http://vimeo.com/26190208 Please feel free to post the TED Talk everywhere you think appropriate. Help spread Spontaneous Smiley!!
Her soon to be released children’s BOOK: http://www.amazon.com/Smiley-Book-Colors-Ruth-Kaiser/dp/0375869832/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311359605&sr=8-1
Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/8537126732
Facebook Fan Page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ruth-SpontaneousSmiley-Kaiser/132167586820062?ref=ts
Twitter: SpontaneSmiley
Fountain Smiley
If a blade of grass springing up from a field has the power to move you, if the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if the simplest things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. – Eleanora Duse
If the simplest things . . .
Spontaneous Smiley is about deciding to notice the simplest things and then letting those things fill you with pleasure and gratitude. Allowing pleasure to flood through you, increases your level of happiness.
Pleasure is not synonymous with happiness. Pleasure is dependent on the thing or the circumstance that is pleasing to you. They go away and the pleasure can slip away, too.
However, one certainly experience more happiness when they allow themselves to be open to pleasure, when they give themselves permission to wallow in the pleasure. Enjoying pleasures increases your feelings of well being, serenity, fulfillment, etc. In a nutshell, enjoying pleasures pumps up your sense that you are a happy person. And, the happiness does not go away when the pleasant stimulus is gone.
Recognize the things with the potential to give you happiness and then let them.
Smile. Be happy.
Ruth
Sky Smiley
It is better to give than to receive. That doesn’t mean that receiving isn’t mighty nice, too. Mighty, mighty nice.
Over the last 10 days I have received a flood of good wishes and kind messages because of the posting of my TED Talk (http://vimeo.com/26190208) and the listing on Amazon of my upcoming Children’s book: a Smiley Book of Colors (http://www.amazon.com/Smiley-Book-Colors-Ruth-Kaiser/dp/0375869832/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311001161&sr=8-1).
Thanks to everyone. I have read every message. I have loved them all. Your kind words have delighted and inspired me.
Smile. Be happy.
Ruth
What is the opposite of play? Is it work? I don’t think so. I’d argue that the definition for play and the definition for work are the same. Does the following work for both: To be engaged in physical or mental activities in order to achieve a purpose. That sounds like WORK to me. But, hey wait a minute. That sounds like PLAY to me.
As a teacher I am sure that children at play are children at work. Just because they derive fun/positive feelings from the play in no way detracts from its being work. Adults engaged in work also experience fun/positive feelings from a job well done; their work is play. Work and play have so many commonalities. It would be healthy if society saw play as important work. It would be healthy if society saw work as an important form of play.
So if play and work share a definition, what then is the opposite of play? I searched through tons of online dictionaries and thesauruses (or would that be thesauri?) as well as my old tattered dictionary & thesaurus my dear old dad gave me when I left home for college (Henry, I really miss you. It’s been 19 years and I still feel just as strongly as I did back in 1992 that it was bad, bad, bad that you went and died. Oh, how you would have enjoyed your grandchildren. They’ve turned out really great. Sorry you didn’t get to see them grow up!).
I looked at both the verb play and the noun play. Here are a bunch of the words used to describe play/playfulness (please take them as I type them, it’s too much work to try to get tenses and such correct): entertainment, relaxation, recreation, diversion, distraction, leisure, enjoyment, happy, joyful, pleasure, fun, revelry, enjoy, fun, frolic, mess around, goof off, caper, cheerful, lighthearted, buoyant, jovial, jocular, without a care.
I’ve only included a small sample of all the words associated with play. As I re-read these words, a growing certainty arises: the opposite of play is not work, it is sadness, sorrow, depression, adversity, agonize, angst.
I hope you choose to rejoice/play. I know it seems easy and trite to say it is a choice, but actually it is! Life, even as full of troubles and challenges as it is for all of us, is really full of wonder. Life if full of offers to play. Sadly we often forget to make the choice to play when it is clear that play can bring us the joy.
Smile. Be happy and remember to play!
Ruth
Strawberry Smiley
One of about a dozen Strawberry Smileys.
Slicing strawberries for the Spontaneous Smiley Project,
does that make them a business expense?
Well, kind of. It was better when I was looking at it without my glasses. LOL!
There’s a Smiley in every basket!