Weekly Smile #WeeklySmile

(Note – It is back!  The Weekly Smile shutdown on 13th of September, 2017, after 88 weeks. But now, a little more than a year later, I am bringing it back!!)

A couple of years ago a friend asked on Face Book for people to be a little more civil, to stop being jerks. She said that she had had enough of negativity and hate. This friend is a photographer with the rare ability to see beauty in almost anything and share that beauty with the world. Yes, her photos of jumping spiders are beautiful! I was moved to write as a comment:

“There are days I go in search of the kind, compassionate, loving and beautiful. Despite what we sometimes see on the news, FB and elsewhere, there is much more beauty in the world than ugliness, much more kindness than hate or cruelty. Perhaps we should all have a goal to make at least one person smile every day.”

Thus started my “A Smile a Day” campaign. “A Smile a Day” had to come to an end, but I decided to replace it with something better, “The Weekly Smile”, a shared blogging event that anyone can join.

You can join!

What made you smile in the last week? A photo? A kind word from a friend or stranger? A random act of kindness witnessed in life or on the news? Seeing a small baby or talking to an elderly parent or grandparent?  A joke? A song? Taking a walk? Going skiing? There had to be something. It could be small or Earth shattering. It might be a private word or a very public action. Say in a few words what made you smile. Or post a photo or a video or a link.

The whole idea, the one and only reason reason for this weekly event, is to counterbalance, even if to some small degree, all of the hate and negativity in the world today. With that in mind, there are a few rules I’d like you to follow if you want to join in. They’re more guidelines than actual rules, but please keep these in mind.

1. Don’t make your smile about something mean or hateful. Keep negativity out of it.
2. Don’t make your smile discriminate against anyone for race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual preference, primary language, disability, illness, etc. You know the routine.
3. Try to keep violence out of it. If some selfless hero helps some people during a time of violence, sure, use that. If a family member received an honor for a wartime action, OK. Celebrating a person is fine, just don’t glorify the actual violence.
4. Keep politics out of it. Your uncle won an election? That’s something to smile about! You met a high profile politician? Sure, that is too. You want to have a political rant? Please do it elsewhere.
5. Careful with religion. You might smile about a religious service or something else that had a deep meaning to you, but don’t condemn other people’s religion or try to convert everyone. Keep it your personal experience.
6. Most people reading are adults. We can handle most of what you want to write. But please, if you wouldn’t want your 12 year old son or daughter reading it, you might not want to post it. Try for PG-13 instead of XXX.

As I said, these are guidelines. Unless there is a very bad “violation”, particularly of the first two “rules”, I won’t remove links or give you demerit or anything.

I plan on doing a Weekly Smile post on Mondays, but you can post at anytime.  The way you join is by doing a “pingback” to the current week’s Weekly Smile post or leaving a comment with the URL to your smile.  If it grows to big, I will start doing a linkup again. Each week I will post a quick recap that has links to all of the Smiles people linked on the current week’s Weekly Smile post.

Try to use the hashtag #WeeklySmile when you use Twitter or other social media that uses hashtags.  I searched Twitter and found that #weeklysmile had been used only a handful of times back in 2012 and 2013.  It hasn’t been used since.  So it’s ours!  I also registered it on Twubs.

You can use the graphic at the top.  It is the official graphic for the event.

I hope to see your smile this week!