Hardened Faces or Hardened Hearts

Today as I was stopped at a stoplight, I began to look at the people driving the cars passing by me.  Have you ever done this? It's funny-when we're driving we feel a false sense of privacy.  When we're alone in a car we'll sing along to songs we don't want others to know we listen to, we'll multitask way more than when there are passengers with us, we'll do things like brush our teeth, shave, put on makeup, etc. just because we don't think anyone else will know or see or care.  I'm the first to admit that I'll sing loud and proud when I'm alone in my car.  I belt those songs out like my car is a soundproof box, and my voice won't work outside of it.

Well today as I was driving, I watched seven or eight cars pass me by, but one car stands out to me in particular.  A man in his twenties was driving alone in the car-not unusual by any means.  However, his face is one I don't think I'll soon forget.  Unlike the majority of faces I see each day, this man was smiling.  Not a polite grin or a smirk or just a slight, closed mouth smile, but a full-blown, sparkle-in-the-eyes, shining smile. I have no idea what made this man so happy, but his joyfulness made me think.  Why should a smile be so out of place? What happened to society that something so normal and natural is now the exception not the norm?

I have to wonder how America has fallen so far from just half a century ago.  Sure, we care more about equality and acceptance and have rights provided to everyone regardless of, well, almost anything, but generally speaking, people seem much more closed off, angry, and hard-hearted.  What happened to the days where families would sit on the front porch late into the evening spending time with friends and neighbors, sharing stories and laughing together? When kindness, common courtesy and manners were more important than climbing the business- or social-ladders and making the best for ourselves.

I go to a school where walking to class means saying hello or smiling to everyone you pass regardless of whether you know them or not.  Taylor University is a considered a bubble sometimes.  It's a bubble away from the outside world, and in a way that's a bad thing, but I don't think of it like that.  In my Taylor bubble, I learn that a friendly smile can make someone's entire day, holding the door for a classmate with too many books is a gesture that should be normal, sitting down with someone who's eating alone can be the only act of kindness they see that day.

Our hardened faces may mask our true feelings, our struggles, and ourselves, but I think what a hardened face really shows is the hardened heart that lies behind it.  That young man smiling in the car today might not have the perfect life, or maybe he does, but his smile spoke to me saying that regardless of the good or bad in his life, he's choosing to be happy. Now that's a choice I want to make.