The Smile left Behind

Any Cheshire cat can do it, but can you? Imagine dying—leaving your temporal body, and whoever met you or thought of you when you were still around, would smile. 

Not a bad heritage to leave behind.

It is an easy task, of course, for professional comedians. They make heavy money for making fun. But there is an altogether different species of man who also seldom stops laughing. They are called Zen Masters. Well, perhaps not outright laughing but a bemused expression seldom leaves their lips.

They don’t take themselves seriously.

They know that they are passers by.

On the other hand there are people who get offended easily. An inadvertent word, a misplaced complement, a causal comment, and they get offended. In the past this resulted in a duel at 3am behind the cathedral. Today that’s illegal. So instead of rapiers or épées we benefit by losing their ill-begotten, often pompous if not actually false friendship. Such people are so full of their own ego that they don’t even begin to realize how ridiculous they are.

We, of course, we don’t get offended. We are way above that sort of supercilious behaviour. We know that only an ego can get offended and we keep ours under a strict control. We relegate our ego to a rag of clothing which we discard, throw away, every hundred years or so. Often much sooner. We are no longer spoiled, juvenile, arrogant politicians who start wars to repair their wounded pride. We don’t impose sanctions on people for much, much lesser crimes than those that we have committed only yesterday. Crimes like starting wars, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, under false pretenses.

We are not wielders of near-absolute power, which has corrupted our ability to pass honest, let alone humble judgment on others.  We don’t get offended, nor do we strive to offend, punish, or impose our puerile judgment on “lesser people”. On people that don’t count? We strive to make sure that when our time comes to die, those left behind, when they think of us, they will smile with a kind, vaguely amused, tolerant smile.

Why?

Because here, on Earth, we are all no more than passers-by. Observers. Beneficiaries of the Benevolent Universe. Like the Cheshire cat. That is why the Cheshire cat smiles. And when he goes, he leaves his smile behind. He knows. Shouldn’t we? 

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