The pasted-on smile

Originally posted on February 10, 2008 – by Andre Piet

By way of introduction to the Goedbericht meeting in Zoetermeer this morning, I briefly pointed to a news item that could be read yesterday on nu.nl.

‘Laughter is unhealthy’

LONDON – Laughter can pose a serious threat to health. This is apparent from a study by a leading psychiatrist from the university in Osaka, Japan.

A spontaneous laugh is fine, but the so-called Japanese ‘perma-smile’, the pasted-on smiling mask that hundreds of thousands of working women in Japan are required to wear, is not.

Mandatory smiling

Almost all service-oriented companies in the Asian country contractually oblige women to continuously display a broad smile. An important part of the basic training of newly hired staff therefore consists of learning the perfect smile.

That is anything but healthy, however, states psychiatrist Makoto Natsume. Sometimes, after a while, the women are no longer able to take off the pasted-on smile.

Depressions

“Forcing yourself to wear a smile for prolonged periods can, when it takes on extreme forms, lead to real depressions,” the British newspaper The Times quoted the psychiatrist on Saturday. It can also lead to physical complaints.

According to Natsume, people with the smile-mask syndrome exhibit complaints comparable to RSI.

Joy is something that comes from within. A person cannot be happy on command. If this nevertheless happens, it is faked. And in the long run that turns out to be unhealthy. It frustrates and ultimately makes one depressed. Cheerfulness, like for example love and sanctification (dedication), is a quality that by definition is triggered from within. If not, then there is sprake of “perma-smile,” feigned love and sham sanctification.

A person does not become joyful because one is supposed to be joyful (on the contrary, that makes one depressed), but because one hears a joyful and truly good message. Then joy is a fruit that grows naturally. The misery of so much preaching today is that it continually hammers on the display of qualities that only come into their own spontaneously. Behold the religious variant of the perma-smile and related imitation.

Give me the good message – I do not have to become joyful because of it, I cannot help but become joyful because of it!

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