I’m Going Technicolor

When I decided I wanted to write a book about kindness in January of 2017, I thought it would be a quick project. I’d been writing and editing for much of my life, and I knew the book would be short. What I didn’t realize is that it would take me three years to evolve to the point where I could write something authentic and potentially useful. It required “rebirthing myself” at the age of 80. 

That’s no easy task. Eight decades of protecting myself in public places. Eight decades of withdrawing into myself so much that I wasn’t even aware of the people in my vicinity. People were just an obstacle I had to get past to pay for my groceries or buy stamps at the post office. I’d stand silently in a line of other silent people just waiting to get my business done and get home to my safe space. 

That was my life. 

When I became aware of that dynamic of shutting out the world when I was in public spaces and started actually looking at the people around me, I noticed that most of them looked the way I felt. Distant. Internalized. On automatic. Doing the same thing I was doing.

I also began to notice the few people who were behaving differently—acknowledging and interacting with the people around them—and how alive and happy they seemed in comparison.  How they brought life to the space they were in. 

It reminded me of a film from the late nineties called Pleasantville, where the residents lived staid and self-restricted lives in a black-and-white world. As a few of the characters in the film began stepping outside the culturally imposed “rules” they’d learned to live by, their bodies began changing from black and white to full color. At first the “outliers” were judged and shunned for being different and breaking the cultural rules, but gradually other members of the community followed their lead, and eventually the entire town was in vibrant color, and all its inhabitants were leading Technicolor lives.

That metaphor speaks to me. I want to help the world discover the magic that happens when we choose to trade a black-and-white world of fear and self-protection for a Technicolor life of shared kindnesses and connection.

That’s what “Smiling at Strangers” is about.