Podcast: I Believe in Perseverance

A Smile a Day...Keeps the Doctor Away?

Just like apples, smiles can also keep your visits to the doctor to a minimum. A happy life is a healthy life, and spreading that happiness to fellow citizens helps everyone to live healthier lives.

But let's be serious. No matter how happy someone is, they are sometimes struck by headaches, colds, or worse, the flu. Have you ever thought about the rhetoric of medicine labels? Neither had I, until I was stumped while composing this very blog post only to have my bottle of Zyrtec glaring at me from my desktop. Zyrtec has printed about 300 words on its tiny label, informing consumers of its active ingredient, uses, warnings, directions, and "other" information. It seems as if drug producers only provide the minimum amount of information in the simplest form possible. What if all forms of communication were like that? I think humans would become quite robotic within colloquial conversation. Even further, imagine President Obama giving a political address in medicine label format:

Active Ingredient: Immigration law reform
Purpose: Protection
Uses: Relieves danger from overflow of foreigners, provides citizens with more jobs, protects citizens by the border
Warnings: Do not use if an illegal immigrant planning on staying in US
Directions: Illegal immigrants must take responsibility in addition to our government and businesses
Other Information: Don't dispute the betterment of our US citizenry at the expense of illegal immigrants
Inactive ingredients: effort, planning, enforcement, conflict.
Questions?

This type of address would cause unprecedented questioning and outrage by all inhabitants of the US due to vaguely ambiguous delivery. I guess I see why politics uses rhetoric the way it does, but wouldn't it be interesting to view the actual reaction of our citizenry to any important rhetorical situation in medicine label format?

A Smile a Day...

Rhetoric can essentially be defined as the art of successful public communication, whether spoken or written. But what is successful public communication without body language? Oftentimes, our bodies communicate more effectively than our language does. How does this play into “civic life”, or being a valuable citizen and asset to society? For me, the answer is simple. I can use body language in my everyday life to improve the lives of my fellow citizens. Yeah, it’s as simple as that. Our “Generation Y” is predisposed to always performing with minimum effort to achieve anything. Some of us might think, “Being a valuable citizen by improving the lives of others? Takes too much time. No thanks.” Think again, Generation Y. It only takes 26 face muscles and merely 1 millisecond to smile and spread happiness to your fellow citizenry. Can’t even spare 1 millisecond? Well, you burn more calories the more you smile. I hope I have you convinced. As a person who has been told countless times that she has a naturally angry facial structure, I have always made a conscious effort to smile, or at least look happy. But it wasn’t until high school that someone advised me that smiling at a stranger can make their day. For some reason, this fragment of advice stuck with me. Maybe it’s because when I find myself to be the recipient of a random smile, my outlook instantly experiences an optimistic boost, helping me to welcome everyday challenges with a ready attitude. Sometimes, I feel like a semi-idiot smiling at strangers on my walks to class, and it isn’t until that smile is reciprocated with a sense of gratitude that I am encouraged to keep on handing out smiles. I’ve noticed that smiling tends to have a type of “domino effect” on humankind. I smile at a stranger walking by in Penn State's HUB, and they return the smile, continuing to smile at the next person they encounter while leaving the building. That person extends the gesture, and so on. I believe that this domino effect allows people to become valuable citizens by spreading a happiness that has the power to improve even the worst of days.