Paul Simon inspired me last night. Actually, it was the collage of musical stars that payed homage to him on PBS. It may signify my increasingly old fartish ways, but I enjoy these tribute programs, when done well. While the music, career, and creativity were sufficient to make me feel utterly unaccomplished, it was the way in which the performers seemed to earnestly enjoy playing their music that I found inspiring. More precisely, it was their smiles that hit me. James Taylor, some guy named Mark Anthony (nix the Cleopatra joke), and everyone else that graced my TV screen was authentically enjoying life and smiling.

I take myself too seriously and, thus, don't smile by default. It's not that I don't smile, it's just not my normal state. You know the folks that do smile, naturally, most of the time? Like if you peeked in their kitchen, and they were chopping onions, they would be smiling? I don't aspire to be that person, but I do aspire to smile more than my current quota.

So, today, I consciously smiled more often. It was one of my first thoughts this morning and one that I had to continually bring back to my frontal lobe as the day progressed. I smiled to the summer counselors. I smiled to the campers. The reaction, as expected, was a warm smile in return. But the real jewel of this experiment was realizing that making the choice this morning actually yielded a more positive disposition for myself all day long. Things just didn't bother me as they probably would have, otherwise. I was actually happier.

When I was back in, say, elementary school, I'll bet I used to smile a lot more. Don't all kids smile by default? I suspect I'm not objective enough to figure out what happened between now and then. Somewhere along the way, my smile priority took a backseat to a more methodical, ordered, analytical processing brain. I'm thinking it must be better to be dumb and happy than smart and unsatisfied.

It takes two weeks to form a habit. Tomorrow is day two of smiling.