In The Holographic Universe, the late Michael Talbot noted that back sometime in the latter half of the last century - scary that we get to say that now - physicists tried to calculated the energy potential of a simple cubic centimetre of empty space. The math ended up revealing that there was more energy than something like 10,000 hydrogen bombs contained in every cubic centimetre of the universe. Talbot noted that many other physicists felt the calculation was somehow in error, and there is still some controversy today over the implications of what that calculation would mean if it's correct.
Talbot didn't note, however, whether the physicists in question had considered the power of a simple smile into the equation.
In the colder months, Tuesday nights are Hockey Night in Hamilton for Jody. Michael and Julius have been going to pick-up floor hockey on the East Side of town for a few years now. In previous years, I was a spectator, but when I found myself suddenly unmarried this past winter, I started joining in. With baseball season over, it's now time to lace up the runners and go balls out crazy on the gym floor of the elementary school where we play.
With a couple of hours to kill before hockey, and with the sun shining, but setting earlier than ever, I decide to get in my hoodie sweater and head out to the park, tea in hand, to potentially finish Eckart Tolle's The Power of Now. The trick about that book is there are intermittent pauses throughout where you not only reflect on what Tolle says, but to let go of thinking altogether and just be....which is the point of the book.
To experience the Now means to go out of your mind. It's like that state of being when you wake up, alert, experiencing pure sensory input without sorting it out. Much like what I went through with the sex couple next door, who have been remarkably quiet these past few nights. I almost miss it....almost. But I digress.
I walk to the first bench facing Lake Ontario past the War Memorial and have a seat. Across from me, wind is rippling out over the water under a blue sky with swirls of wispy cloud. The air is cold and humid, containing early traces of winter chill. The sun is setting, the day's last rays amplified by the thin curtain of stratus on the horizon, turning the trees lining Lakeshore into comfortable autumn silhouettes...
.....and before I get too smitten with my own powers of description, I'll say this much: it was real purdy out, y'all....
Very few pedestrians walk the walkway as I put on my headphones from my BlackBerry Brain (she's my very favourite phone...her name is Vera) and listen to tunes while I read the book. The only people you typically see in weather like this are dog walkers. There are a few out here now.
Tolle has an exercise in which you just fill your body with awareness, head to toe. It's an old practice, very related to ones I've read from Wayne Dyer and Whitley Strieber, but it's so basic that it's hard to assign credit, and if you try, you're missing the point of the exercise. You just become aware, usually first of your toes or fingers, and move inward until you are sensing your whole body.
Feel whatever each part of your body feels like, acknowledge it, focus on it. Then, when you're experiencing pure sensation, stop thinking about it and just become that sensation. It's trickier than it looks to describe it in words, given that words themselves are a form of thought, but Tolle does a good job.
I close my eyes and perform the exercise. I am not shutting out the world around me, but acknowledging awareness of self, inside and out. After a few minutes, I feel...presence. I am simply here.
Just then, a dog walker passes in my line of sight. She is late thirties, no ring, walking a grey curly haired thing on a leash I can barely identify as a dog. She looks my way, and sees that I have my headphones on, so conversation is a moot point.
But she smiles at me.
And it's the brightest, most energizing smile I've seen in a long time from a stranger.
Her face seemes to glow with an inner energy, a recognition of another spirit on a human adventure, just sitting on that bench.
And I smile back. In fact, I don't stop smiling for five straight minutes.
I don't know if it's a result of the exercise, but I had just been refocused on sensation. And it makes me wonder: what is the power of a smile when you can just immerse yourself in it? When you can just drop the social conditioning that has us treating each other as potential threats, obstacles along the daily grind towards nothing.
About ten minutes later, the sun now below the horizon, but the light of the smile remaining on my face, I get up and headed for home. As I walk, I smile at three other people. Each of them return it. And with each one, the same warm energy flows out. Powerful stuff.
I get home into my apartment and head upstairs. I see no one else, but I take a quick glance at the resident directory. I marvel at the isolation that many people in these buildings feel. This is where people like me come to start over, where we lock away our senior parents and retirees, where young immigrant families live without knowing the language. We're all isolated to some degree. Often, we do it to ourselves.
But as I close the door and get myself ready for hockey, I truly wonder if the main message of a smile, when truly experienced, is a reminder that we're never completely alone, anywhere, at anytime.
10,000 nuclear bombs in each cubic centimetre of space. I'll put my money on those physicists any day.
I like this. I occasionally get this feeling when I'm walking to work and a good tune comes on my iPod, and I forget for a few minutes that I'm on my way to work.
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