The smile of Asia as a phrase has been used in advertising – too. But the actual fact is also that in many countries around the world, especially in the Near or Far East, as they are called, smiling at others you never even met before is a custom.
People from other parts of the world often feel charmed and after a while even puzzled by these smiles. Aren’t we friends, when we smile? Or at least close?
There’s another fine line that Rudyard Kipling, English ‘poet laureate’ and award-winning writer, used in his book “Kim”:
“The indifference of native crowds he was used to.
But this strong loneliness among white men preyed on him.”
If you have once encountered and actually felt that atmosphere and met people from those parts, you will come to realize that he was right. It feels exactly that way. That sense of community and friendliness, acceptance of others as human beings can be heart-warming.
I am not originally form anywhere close to those parts. But I have lived with and learned from the Persian culture for the better part of my comparatively long live.
I have come to appreciate that feeling. It is based on the idea, that we of course would need to really meet, get to know the other person in order to be friends. But that as human beings we can be close, because we are similar in our needs and wishes and sorrows and joys; we need each other, in troubled times as well as in joyful times.
According to that nice saying too:
“Sorrow shared is sorrow halfed. Joy shared is doubled joy.”
It can help also to (again) understand that in spite of the advantages the individualism in Western countries has brought, it can make people lonely. The pandemic has increased and sharpened that.
Perhaps the ideas we see daily actually ‘thrown’ at us all around the clock (if we don’t filter them), online that is, about being ever more optimized, the ‘perfect person’, make it more difficult.
The daily live in Asia has developed over thousands of years, climate and living conditions as well as ancient philosophy and customs are part of it. We can learn that:
Smile – and the world will smile with you.