— Anshira
Though I first watched it three years ago, one line from the K-drama “My Liberation Notes” (by Yeom Mi-jeong, the perpetually gloomy heroine) still helps me get through many days.
“Just five minutes of happiness in a day, then life would become bearable.” Just five minutes. That’s all.
Not an hour-long massage, not a trip to some hill station, not even a blissful stretch of uninterrupted sleep.
Just a handful of fleeting and borrowed seconds. Like that of holding the door open for someone entering a shop, and hearing them say “thank you”. That brief joy lasts about ten seconds. Collect enough of those tiny sparks, and you have gathered your daily five minutes.
This philosophy is both depressing and liberating. Depressing, because it suggests that life is largely unbearable by default. Liberating, because it lowers the bar for happiness to something absurdly manageable; no need for grand revelations, just hold the elevator for a stranger or catch a random smile across the street.
This made me think of smiling at strangers. A simple act, free of charge, available in bulk supply, and yet somehow rarer than autorickshaw rides priced reasonably in Chennai. Smiling (in theory) should be the easiest way to clock in those ten-second happiness deposits. But in practice it is a risky business, about as unpredictable as our beloved hostel LAN connectivity, and just as capable of failing when you need it most.
Anyway, I’ve tried testing this theory now and then. Sometimes as a deliberate experiment, sometimes out of genuine impulse. On certain days, with no particular reason at all, I have smiled at people walking toward me. When they smiled back, I felt that quiet spread of warmth inside, the kind that lingers longer than it should for such a small act.
Of course, not all smile encounters have gone so smoothly.
Once, in an elevator, I smiled at someone; they blinked, looked startled, and promptly stared at the floor numbers. Did they think I was some sort of creep? Another time, I smiled at someone who looked like they were carrying the entire weight of the world on their shoulders, and they looked at me with suspicion, like I was about to sell them insurance.
After moving from my small village to this sprawling city, I began to suspect that smiling at strangers is the equivalent of announcing, “Hi, I might be unhinged.” Still, every once in a while, I do get a smile in return. And each time, the happiness is quick and fleeting, but very real.
When I was younger, smiling was part of the social contract. The fish sellers, the vegetable vendors who walked from house to house; all of them smiled when they met you. The bus conductor smiled. The doctor at the primary health centre smiled. Neighbors smiled across their courtyards. Everyone exchanged not just a grin but also a word of greeting, a small check-in.
But today, grocery shopping has been replaced by a delivery app with a faceless order ID. The neighbors are still there, but their faces are stuck to their phones, perhaps smiling, only at reels. That human connection we once took for granted, however ordinary, mattered. A smile did not just brighten your day; it anchored you to a community. Without it, we are left scrolling endlessly for emojis that mimic what we no longer share in real life.
Of course, this is not just my sentimental rambling. Scholars have been onto this for years. Barbara Fredrickson, American social psychologist, proposed what she calls the Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions. According to her, positive emotions (even fleeting ones like the warmth of a stranger’s smile) broaden our mindset and build our psychological resources. Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel laureate, also offers a helpful perspective with his “peak-end rule.” He argues that people remember experiences not in their entirety, but by the emotional peaks and how they end. Which means that even if your day is a swamp of smails, boring lectures, and endless assignments, one bright smile, that ten-second happiness, can greatly shape how you remember it.
Even then, smiling at strangers is not without its hazards. The act (innocent as it may be) is often misinterpreted. Smile too long at someone, and you are either creepy or flirting. If you smile at someone who does not smile back, it’s the emotional equivalent of sending a heartfelt WhatsApp and seeing the dreaded “blue ticks, no reply.” In other words, the disheartening “seenzone”. So the question arises: if smiling is risky, awkward, and sometimes unwelcome, why bother?
Precisely because the world has tilted toward frowns. Look around. An average person looks as if he is about to be cross-examined in court. Even the child we see riding with his parents already seems resigned to a lifetime of exams. A smile is a rebellion against this background noise of weariness. It may not transform the world; but it might soften one corner of it, even just for a moment.
And sometimes, that is enough.
Of course, I should confess: I do not always follow my own philosophy. There are days when I am the unsmiling stranger, glaring at trees or sky, actively avoiding eye contact. There are afternoons when even five minutes of happiness feels like a luxury I cannot afford. On such days, I hide behind my phone, my lips sealed, my quota of smiles deferred to a brighter day tomorrow.
So yes, smiling at strangers is awkward, sometimes futile, occasionally disastrous. But it is also one of the few currencies of joy we can still afford in an overpriced world. Yeom Mi-jeong’s five-minute theory may sound bleak, but perhaps it is more generous than we realize. For in those short moments, those ten-second sparks, life is not just bearable, but briefly luminous.
And if, tomorrow morning, you find yourself in an elevator with a stranger who smiles at you for no apparent reason, smile back. That ten seconds is yours to keep, and nobody’s to take.
—Edited by Lakshmi Yazhini | Design by Surabhi Chhikara
Article 19 