I’m a member of a very exclusive club. It’s a club with a very small membership. And the members are all anonymous, for the most part.
Some might think of it as a club centered around an addiction, and I’d say that’s fair. But if it is, it’s one of the best addictions a person could have.
The membership is open to anyone. But oddly, so few seem to want to join.
It’s the “Wake Up at 4 a.m. and Walk, Run or Drive Around the 5-Mile Loop on Barnegat Bay” club.
At least that’s what I like to call it.
Members range from joggers and walkers, both with and without dogs, to township workers, police officers on patrol, garbage men, and those who defy a proper title and just come to watch the sunrise over the bay.
For the past decade, four to five days a week, I’ve been out there traversing the loop.
The relationship between members is typically defined by a wave and/or a nod of the head. There’s the occasional “Good morning!” or “What a beautiful day!” or, in August, “Hope you brought your bug spray!”
That’s due to the salt marsh summer guests affectionately called the spawns of Satan, AKA greenheads. A distant cousin of the horsefly, but with green eyes and an insatiable bloodlust.
But beyond that, few of us ever speak, let alone know each other by name. Which, in a way, is odd…but then again, perhaps it’s not that odd.
But even when no words are exchanged, something is.
And I came face to face with that reality a few Sundays ago when I brought my father to Mass.
Due to a scheduling disaster, or as I like to call it, the weekend, I had to take him to an early Mass on Sunday morning. It was a Mass that I rarely attend, and I knew very few people there.
But there was one who knew me.
As the recessional faded into the morning air and the parishioners began to file out, a rough-looking, grizzled middle-aged man began coming toward me.
I looked to my left. I looked to my right.
Nope, he was coming to me.
His leathery face was carved with deep lines from years in the sun, and there was a hardness about him.
As he neared, his right eye squinted and his face drew into a smirking smile.
“Do you run by the docks in the morning?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do!”
He laughed gruffly and said, “Smiley.”
“That’s what we call you…Smiley.”
Which drew an uncomfortable, still-trying-to-process-this chuckle from me.
Smiley?
Not “running guy,” or “We do hard things so we can do hard things” guy, or “disciplined one,” or even “the lunatic who runs in shorts in January”…
But Smiley?
My ego passed out.
It’s humbling to compare how we sometimes see ourselves with how the world perceives us.
Smiley?
His words and his expression haunted me throughout the day. Once I got over myself and gave my ego some smelling salts, I couldn’t help but laugh.
And the more I thought about it, the more I thought about the others I’d encounter out on the loop, and how it was always great to see them.
And then I thought about why that was.
It began with a smile.
And was usually followed by a wave.
A priest I once met said that a smile can save a life.
Mother Teresa said that “peace begins with a smile.”
All of a sudden it dawned on me that one of the reasons I love running the loop is just that.
The wave…and the smile.
They’re all Smileys.
“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Now, for the record, I’m not renaming the club “The Smileys.” The “Wake Up at 4 a.m. and Walk, Run or Drive Around the 5-Mile Loop on Barnegat Bay” club has much more of a ring to it.
But instead of a secret handshake, we have something much more powerful.
The wave…and the smile.
It’s a simple gift, freely given, to people whose names we may never know. And oftentimes, they return with their own.
It certainly won’t solve all the world’s problems…
But it’s a free and easy way to start.
So, Smiley?
I suppose every middle-aged, red-blooded, cold-plunging, early-rising, hard-running male has a way he’d like to be described.
Well, whatever that is…
Smiley is better :-)
“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”
St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta
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“We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.” St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta
I like that and I am certain the name fits you well. Smile.