The most beautiful curve on a woman"s body is her smile...

I thought I would title this brief piece with Bob Marley''s famous quote about the wonder of a pretty woman’s smile, for it certainly is true.

But equally insightful is that observation of 19th Century poet and dramatist Edmond Rostand, which I have only very slightly altered in the final line, below:

‘She is a mortal danger without meaning to be one; she''s exquisite without giving it a thought; she’s a trap set by nature, a rose in which love lies in ambush! Anyone who has seen her smile, has known perfection. She creates grace without movement and makes all divinity fit into her slightest gesture. And neither Venus in her shell, nor Diana striding in the great, blossoming forest, can compare to her when she flits down the running path of the local Autumn park in her jogging attire…’ (-apologies to Edmond Rostand, 1868-1918, who, of course, wrote the famed play Cyrano de Bergerac).

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I have been, for all of my life, an unabashed romantic. It was as true when I was youthful as it is now that I am in the final lap of the marathon that is life. And as with all romantics who write or occasionally dash off a poem or two, I am prone to all the usual spiritual decrepitudes that befall hopelessly romantic individuals such as myself. Decrepitudes that typically include occasional bouts of self-questioning, mild depression, dissatisfaction with one’s creative outputs, and towards the end, forced distancing from old friends consequent to knowledge that one’s talents, abilities and personal assets are on the decline.

I was in one such moment of self-imposed umbral reflectivity yesterday, an otherwise bright, crisp and clear Autumn day that served as a welcome reminder that it was time for the summery conditions of a protracted warm season to yield to the slight chill and subtle decay of Fall. In the large local park, all the deciduous trees had finally gotten nature’s message that it was time to shed their leaves and the evergreens seemed to be ostentatiously defiant with their friable greenery as I walked along the edge of that park with the pupster in tow. Underfoot, a carpet of yellowish-red leaves crunched with notably agreeable gusto as I walked slowly along the footpath, lost in thought.

Fall always does this to me…makes me a bit melancholy and deeply aware of how all things must inevitably come to a final conclusive endpoint…not at all happy thoughts to match a splendid Fall day such as this one was.

There were a few other dog-walkers about, as one comes to expect given the great number of pound-rescues that had taken place among the city’s populace this year. The proliferation of dogs in the park is, I suppose, a commendable response to the capriciousness of the ignorant souls who acquire pups, the care for which they were totally unprepared to meet, and abnegate even the minimal requisite burdens of pet parenting. This doggie population explosion often results, unfortunately, in daily encounters between knowledgeable, considerate dog owners and their less astute counterparts in the few parks accessible locally, turning an otherwise fun sniff & squirt outing into a less-than-fun confrontation on many occasions.

Be that all as it may, there I was with my girl (17-year-old ‘Nala’, a Siberian Husky), walking along the path that borders a grove of scented Eucalyptus Blue Gum trees, somewhat lost in rueful thought about how another attractive young husky owner about 50 yards ahead of us was so completely caught up in her smartphone, rather than on the natural beauty of this park. As she thumbed the Instagram images on her phone, totally enmeshed in what appeared there, she was unconsciously dragging her poor husky along, completely ignoring his non-verbal signals that he desperately wanted to stop and smell all the deliciously awful odors along the path.

Walking a dog, properly engaged in, should not be considered an onerous, obligatory task, but a pleasantly symbiotic mutual interaction between self, dog and the park’s flora. Clearly the young woman with the other husky did NOT get that important message and it served as a slamming indictment of exactly what is wrong with the social media obsession so many Gen-Z’ers are slaves to, these days. And, of course, the poor pup bore the brunt of her narcissistic self-absorption, as he strained against his leash to inhale the exquisite odor of some other dog’s poop along the way!

In this semi-black mood, as I followed each dark, preceding thought up with more of the same, I had worked myself up into a real snit, scowling with the frustration of it all.

At that precise moment, I noted that coming directly towards me on the footpath was a pretty young Asian-American woman, clad in the usual abbreviated running apparel that so many favor, and began to move sideways off the path so as to allow her enough distance between us to not worry about whether my girl was friendly or not. It was purely a reflexive move, since I extend the same courtesy to anyone I encounter along the way, but in response, at that exact moment, she broke into the most dazzling beautiful smile I can recall having seen recently, anywhere. And on a face that was as easily as pretty as the rest of her, too!

It was exactly the kind of medicine that us hopeless old congenital romantics need in our dotage to remind us that despite our years we still count as people, that we’re still worthy of attention in an age in which most younger people are so wrapped up in their own vanities and unconscious social avoidance maneuvers that more often than not a pretty young thing will studiously look away and avoid any sort of eye contact whatsoever. It is, probably, a direct result of the sort of damaging social isolation that so-called (ironically) ‘social media’ promotes in younger people, who seem to have completely forgotten how to interact directly with others, vis-à-vis.

Therefore this young woman’s dazzling smile hit me like a defrosting blast of pure thermonuclear energy and I reflexively snapped out of my ruminative moodiness and instinctively smiled back in equal measure! What a moment! And how wonderful it was to receive a genuinely positive bit of gratuitously good feeling from another person like that in a chance encounter.

Musing about this later, it occurred to me that there was probably a bit more to it than just that on my part, for it helped me realise that I’m not a totally unattractive wreck, no matter how easily one may slip into that reflective mode, once over the age of 7 decades! Some fuzzy vestige of my Tom Cruise fighter-pilot alter-ego persona probably stirred deep within the dungeon of my repressed memories of youthful times and attractions and gave me a fresh shot of ‘ego-boost’ that I sorely needed on that day! And with no obligation, either way. We were simply two all-too human souls passing each other in the park, surrounded by spectacular natural growing things, on a stunningly perfect Autumnal day, and tacitly acknowledging both each other’s presence and the God-given perfectness of the natural world around us.

Whatever had made her grin so perfectly at me, whether it was recognition of my intrinsic worth as simply another person worth acknowledging in passing…or a delightfully spontaneous approval of my admittedly beautiful girl-husky side-kick…I’ll never know, but that moment remains with me as something more valuable than anything I can name, as the Autumn days melt into each other this week!

Truly, as Bob Marley so eloquently put it, “(regardless of all her other curves)…the most beautiful curve on a woman’s body is her smile.” And next time you pass a pretty woman who offers you a smile, don’t forget to smile back at her and savor the wonderful rareness of that kinetic energy exchange, received in an unexpected moment on life’s ever unpredictable path when it matters most!

Intangible moments like that are worth more than their weight in gold, after all!

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Postscript:

A few resources on the ''Art of the smile:''

1) The art of the Smile: How to live longer: and die happier

2) Smile more for health, happiness and longevity