Wearing your thoughts on your face

To celebrate the demise of the illness that had pervaded my life the past couple of weeks, I went out Thursday night with some folks. At some point in the evening, the subject of age came up. Ben asked Rick to guess his age. Rick was correct. Because I’m becoming fascinated by this question, I asked Rick to guess my age. Rick is one year younger than myself, but he fully underestimated my age by five years.

This in itself would not be interesting except for the fact that it happens all the time to me. People who, for whatever reason, try to guess my age are routinely four, five, or more years below the mark.

Because it has happened so consistently I’ve thought about reasons why this is. I’d be interested to hear what you have to say on the matter, but my theories run to one destination: The Buddha’s Smile. The face of the Buddha is one of contentment and well being. Simply put, we wear our thoughts on our face. One of my favorite books—a book about thought—has a meditation in one chapter on this fact.

At the heart of the matter, I am basically a happy and, more importantly, an optimistic person. Optimism is in my character. And so my belief is that my inner happiness is worn on my face like a badge. I haven’t accrued the lines of age because, at the end of the day, I am a person at peace.

So I attribute my youthful looks to my Buddha nature. What do you think?