Behind a Harlequin's Painted Smile

 

harlequin - noun - comically dressed performer who entertains with playful tricks and ridiculous behavior (Merriam-Webster)

For the past few weeks, the smile has been on my mind. I don't have a problem smiling. In fact, I prefer it over frowning as both take the same amount of effort. The decision is analogous to choosing to be an optimist as opposed to a pessimist. My new song that just premiered on Friday is about being able to smile through life's difficulties, which is challenging in itself. Just imagine those brave souls who decide to smile and laugh for a living, harlequins, a.k.a. clowns. They do so at the tremendous risk of being made fun of rather than being received with open arms. Quite a few people view harlequins as "creepy," thanks to a popular horror movie IT that premiered in the 1980s. The diabolical clown antagonist, no doubt, has stayed with people over the years, particularly my contemporaries, who are probably responsible for altering the happy-go-lucky image of clowns that was widely spread in the decades prior to the 1980s. Personally, I have never had anything against clowns, even class clowns :). 

Believe it or not, I have a friend Julius, a lifeguard who used to be a professional clown when circuses were labeled innocuous and were in their prime. He worked hard at it, landing at the top of his profession  touring with American troupes. Yet what had influenced him to go into the field was and is no laughing matter. A Neo-Nazi in Sacramento, California had murdered his twenty-year-old son, who as a student had been attempting to eradicate the malevolent movement. After learning of the dire news, my friend could have drowned in immutable waves of grief; his supine corpse could have been left drifting sans a direction in the vast ocean that is life. But he didn't drown. Instead he allowed himself to stay buoyant and alive by inhaling the ebullient, indefatigable spirit of his son and resolving to make people smile, laugh, chortle, guffaw, etc., rather than cry, weep, tear up, etc. Somehow he found the courage to study a harlequin's craft. Undaunted, he smeared white pancake makeup on his face, exaggerated his lips and nose with red lipstick, painted on black lashes extending upwards from his eyes, and donned a clown suit night after night to escape the ugliness of his reality. Extreme? Maybe. Audacious? Definitely. Rather than take people's sympathy, he gave them smiles. Pretty selfless, huh? 

Surely, life is filled with pitfalls and potholes in the form of tragedies and loses. We could take that black lacquered, chez lounge chair, recline back into the darkness, and let it all wash over us; or we could, like Julius, dare to commandeer a lemonade stand and make lemonade out of seriously rotten lemons. It, as always, is about personal choice. 

Choose happiness over misery. 

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