Happiness Isn't A Facial Expression

I'm writing from the Sabina countryside in Italy, a place full of contradictions for me. Some painful things happened here when I was a child, yet this land has always been good to me. Here, my feelings quickly change into their opposites. The boy in me aches with loneliness — then suddenly, his tears turn to joy in the golden sun.

Being here makes it easier for me to understand what the Buddha meant about the inconstancy of conditioned experience. We cling to pleasure, status, praise, and gain, telling ourselves, “This is who I am,” only to see these states reverse themselves again and again. We try to freeze our smiles, but life keeps flowing beyond the frame.

A friend tells me that in Helsinki, there's an ad campaign on city buses that shows scowling old men with the caption: “Happiness isn’t a facial expression.” I wish we had that reminder in the States, where the wellness industry has been reduced to Pinterest boards and airbrushed insights. We invest so much in the performance of healing, not seeing that a forced smile is its own kind of suffering.

Moreover, when we chase the “good,” we exile important parts of ourselves — parts that carry pain, insecurity, and loneliness. These are as inseparable from us as our shadows. And then we long to be understood by others, yet we reveal to them only a narrow sliver of who we are.

Happiness is not a story you sell. It isn't a curated image. Happiness is the refusal to choose between parts of your experience. It's the capacity to welcome both the child who keeps crying that he wants to go home, and the adult who knows he's already there in the sweet Roman twilight.