Resting Joy Face: The Inner Conditions of Our Souls
“Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the haters.”
Ding.
The seatbelt sign turned off, and the flight attendant’s garbled voice erupted through the tiny speakers, “Welcome to Pittsburgh, you may now unfasten your seatbelts.”
Everyone’s earbuds came out. Time to stop watching the movies and playing Candy Crush. Time to reenter the world.
A wave of frowns, scowls, and furrowed brows flowed through the aisles as some folks stood up and others craned their necks forward to see why it was taking so long for the fancy folks at the front of the plane to get their crap and get out.
Everyone was uncomfortable. Everyone just wanted to get out of this tin can that seemed to be rapidly shrinking in on itself.
This is always the worst part of plane travel. You’ve arrived, but you haven’t. You’re free to go but you’re trapped.
You’ll almost always see a scowl on my face at this point in any trip. Get me off this plane so I can get on with why I flew here.
Have you heard of RBF?
It’s an impolite acronym used to describe someone’s resting face when their resting face is… not very friendly. When their default expression is… well… let’s just say grumpy.
I don’t like that I have predictable RBF in some situations. And this is one of them: deplaning.
But on that flight recently I looked over at an older gentleman sitting two rows in front of me. And I was just overcome with this man’s way of being.
He was jolly by default. He had Resting Joy Face. He was just sitting there, minding his own business, and he looked jovial and delighted by life.
Now, my angle might have been off. Maybe I couldn’t see it quite right. Maybe he was just adjusting his dentures with his tongue or trying to air out his gums or something.
But from my seat… this man was beaming with joy.
I want to have Resting Joy Face.
I want to emanate love.
I want to be contagiously kind.
This is a good spot to share two passages from ancient texts that for your consideration.
In Matthew 5:14-16 (NIV) Jesus teaches that… “You are the light of the world.”
And just a few verses he encourages us to let our light shine!
You are the light of the world. Let your light shine!
Then there’s this old Buddhist text called the Dhammapada that reads, “Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the haters.”
Happy we live indeed. Friendly amidst the haters.
Those are just a couple of the hundreds of passages from centuries of wisdom literature encouraging us to shine our light and exude happiness.
Anytime I dig deep into that ancient wisdom I come out believing that when our hearts and souls are inwardly tuned into love, we’ll have more of a chance to exude an outward joy for the benefit of others.
But that’s not easy at all. I want to acknowledge the heft of that idea.
To be able to, by default, emit cheerful rays of loving-kindness… this requires overcoming so much — for someone like me at least.
I have to overpower selfishness and impatience. I have to work around past scars and open wounds. I have to come to terms with the physical and mental pains of aging. I have to be stronger than my desires and smarter than my fears. I have to do a lot of work on the inside in order to not have RBF on the outside.
And I think that’s why noticing that old man on the airplane with the big goofy smile stands out to me. I wonder what he’s done to cultivate an inner peace that would bear such joy-filled outer fruit. I wonder what connection he’s found to some deep and tranquil truth that it would result in such a cheery smile he was gifting the world at that moment.
Or I wonder if maybe he just had gas.
I want to have Resting Joy Face.
I want to emanate love.
I want to be contagiously kind.
And I know the outward light I desire requires conditions inside my heart and soul that would permit for a spark to be lit in the first place.
And I pray that I might remember that the external expression everyone I encounter is emitting is at least somewhat determined by the inner conditions of their heart and soul. Amen.