A Word Edgewise by Mary Joe Clendenin

Last Updated 06/30/05

For more literature go to Clendenin Books
Email: mjclen@our-town.com

             WEAR YOUR MONA LISA SMILE

         By Mary Joe Clendenin

           Have you ever felt you were just one of the millions of gnats buzzing around a load of overripe peaches? And felt that however hard you buzzed, wherever you landed for a breather, you were still just one in a huge swarm?

          I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me that has trouble picturing great numbers of people in my mind. I can’t picture 175,000 people being wiped out by a tsunami. I know it happened, the tragedy of it, each picture of a victim with that lost look—with that look of one wondering and searching for a lost one, pricks my heart.

          Then I saw a picture in the paper last week of an annual pilgrimage of people going to Mecca’s Grand Mosque. It was an aerial picture showing hoards of humanity packed in streets, byways, sidewalks, everywhere, no cars on the highways, just people packed like cards in a deck. An estimated 2 million people are expected one day this week. All of those people crowded into the city, standing room only. (Of course, I had to wonder what happens when the calls of nature occur. Even with 50,000 military persons for protection, what about sanitary provisions?)

          Another picture brought home the message of how many people share this world with me. Two men on the cover of LIFE were climbing up a wall, 40 or more feet high, of 150 pound bags of coffee in a Columbian warehouse. We in America consume 3 billion pounds of coffee each year, the world consumes about 11 billion pounds, all made from little beans that are hand-picked, hand-sorted, especially roasted and processed ready for the coffee pot. An interesting note: “Most of the coffee grown in the western hemisphere can be traced back to a single coffee seedling brought to Martinique by a French naval officer in 1720.”

          However, I usually have only one of those many cups daily—could never make a dent in that mountain of sacks, but that speaks for the existence of a few other people.
Have you ever been in a traffic jam where all you could see before and after you were cars—most with impatient people making them shiver? Or stood in a check out line until your milk turned sour?

    Now, after picturing all of that, do you feel small?

          Change of scenery. Have you ever stood on a hill in a limitless spread of prairie in Texas or New Mexico, turned round and round to see nothing but a high, high sky that meets an uninterrupted horizon in the distance, and no one else is in sight, no houses, no cars, no highways, just you. Makes you think that you are the only one in the world—as if you were a special creation inside a translucent sphere held in God’s hand?

          Now that may be a more real picture than all the others. Because, you are special, one of a kind. No other person in the world has your eyes, your nose, your size, your bone structure, your smile, your personality, with your particular talents. No one thinks just like you, values friends just like you, shares compassion just like you. You are the only one. You are a unique, rare creature, and there is value in rarity, in uniqueness. The Lord made you one of a kind, with some resemblances of your ancestors, but he left out or added something to make you special.

          Now, if you are unique and antique, think how valuable that makes you. You can sit back in your rocker with a Mona Lisa smile on your face and make people wonder where that smile comes from, what though-waves are passing through your mind. That look, that smile is yours. It’s special. So, just do those things you choose and keep smiling. Be a unique antique—or what ever else you choose. Just keep in mind that you may be one in millions, but you are special.