{"id":5486,"date":"2026-06-05T08:55:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5486"},"modified":"2026-06-05T08:55:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:55:49","slug":"smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/smile\/","title":{"rendered":"Smile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

Harvey Ross Ball\u2019s most famous artistic creation took just 10 minutes to complete, and it earned him a mere $45.

But it\u2019s been worth a billion smiles.

In 1963, Ball, a freelance artist guiding his own advertising firm, was approached by the marketing director of State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts (now known as Hanover Insurance). State Mutual had recently merged with another corporation. The transition had been rough for everyone concerned. Employee morale was in the dumpster.

Could he design \u201ca little smile\u201d to help bring a surge of happiness to the workplace?

Ball decided to go with an actual smile.

He drew an arc on a sunny yellow circle. Concerned that his smile could become a frown if turned upside down, Ball added a pair of narrow oval eyes. In order to add some elements of imperfection, which would evoke a more human feel, he made the eye on the right slightly larger and the mouth slightly off-center.

Done.<\/em> Just like that, Harvey Ball had created one of the most iconic images of the modern world: the smiley face.

State Mutual ordered 100 yellow buttons and passed them around, hoping that employees would smile more often while providing customer service. It worked. The buttons proved to be such a hit that the next order was for 10,000. Demand continued to accelerate. By 1971, more than 50 million smiley buttons were in circulation.

Today, the smiley face and all the members of his emoji family are global superstars.

Ball became unimaginably wealthy, right? Actually, he chose not to copyright his creation. The humble smiley face belongs to all of us. In 1999 he founded the Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation, a not-for-profit charitable trust that supports children\u2019s causes.

Now, that\u2019s a way to create real smiles.

All of which raises an interesting question: Do fake smiles on billboards, flat screens, and yellow buttons really prompt people to smile in return?

An astonishing amount of research says Yes.

Psychologist Susan Krauss Whitbourne admits that the old saying, \u201cSmile, and the world smiles with you\u201d sounds pretty trite. But it happens to be true. If we place ourselves in the presence of smiling people, or just pictures of those with upturned mouths, our own wellbeing is improved. Smiles are contagious, which means we often smile right back.

Smiles are natural stress relievers, contributing to heart health, reducing blood pressure, and boosting the immune system. Smiling has been likened to getting good sleep.

Studies reveal that even forced smiles stimulate the brain to release dopamine and serotonin, feel-good hormones that help relieve pain and stimulate happiness.

The average adult smiles about 20 times a day. Happy people ratchet that up to around 50 times. Children, on average, smile up to 400 times a day, which is why we so often feel happier in the presence of kids \u2013 unless of course they have just finished a large bag of M&Ms and are bouncing off the walls an hour past bedtime.

A famous study tracked the lives of women who had \u201cthe best smiles\u201d in their high school yearbook photos. On average, they experienced happier relationships and fewer setbacks. Likewise, a study of major league baseball players revealed that those who smiled broadly on their baseball cards lived something like seven years longer than those who didn\u2019t.

Now I wish I could go back and pose again for my nine-year-old softball team picture.

Does the Bible have anything to say about smiles?

Interestingly, the words \u201csmile\u201d and \u201csmiling\u201d never appear anywhere in Scripture.\u00a0

But both Old and New Testaments have plenty to say about joy and laughter and celebrating, which we may assume were routinely accompanied by an abundance of smiles.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

Here\u2019s how God instructed Aaron the high priest to bless the Israelites:\u00a0\u201cThe Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace\u201d (Numbers 6:24-26).

There was no greater honor in the ancient world than to see the face of the king.\u00a0And if the king \u201cmade his face shine upon you\u201d \u2013 or as we might put it, \u201clooked at you with glowing affection\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s impossible not to imagine smiles on the faces of both the one who is blessing and the one who is blessed.

St. Mother Teresa declared, \u201cPeace begins with a smile.\u201d

In a world that is desperate for peace of heart and peace between neighbors, the best place to start is to receive the gift of God\u2019s smile.

And then to smile in the presence of all those he will send into our lives this beautiful spring weekend.

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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Harvey Ross Ball\u2019s most famous artistic creation took just 10 minutes to complete, and it earned him a mere $45. But it\u2019s been worth a billion smiles. In 1963, Ball, a freelance artist guiding his own advertising firm, was approached by the marketing director of State Mutual Life Assurance Company of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[281,29,1126],"class_list":["post-5486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blessing","tag-relationships","tag-smiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5488,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5486\/revisions\/5488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}