In my apartment there are four elevators, though most of the time at least one is broken. Because four is a criminally small amount for an apartment with 500+ residents, when I enter from my floor, the lift often already has people in it and the trip down often requires multiple stops.

The atmosphere in apartment lifts can be variable, sometimes on rare occasions it is empty and you enjoy the solitude, sometimes there are people talking and you try not to eavesdrop, but fail since the space is so small, but mostly the atmosphere is tense, driven by a desperate desire for the lift to reach the appointed floor as fast as possible and to please, please stop stopping at these floors where strangers get on who hear you breathe and cramp up the space. When the lift opens at my floor and there are people inside, the look in their eyes say God, did you really have to press this lift at this time? Couldn’t you have waited a little bit and gotten on another one? In response I hurry in, overwhelmed by this guilt and and smash the door-close button and tap my feet and adopt the same hurried attitude as everybody else. But recently I’ve started an experiment.

The experiment is instead of hurrying in, I instead meet everyone’s gaze and smile at everyone in the lift. It’s not a terribly big smile, that would be a little weird, but enough where one feels recognised and feels like I’m happy to see them. All of this takes less than a few seconds, I do it as I walk in so as to not waste time, then I resume the journey down.

Most of the time I get nothing, I’ll smile and people either don’t see or they see my smile and ignore it. This hurt at first but soon I realised it was the default and now I don’t really mind. But sometimes, something magical happens: I get a smile back. And then I know I have connected with somebody, that we have seen each other, and acknowledged each other’s existence, and this makes me happy. Occasionally, these moments even result in a little conversation, a casual How do you do? or a comment about clothes or something we are holding. These moments are rare, last only a few seconds, but are so precious, for it is frankly quite difficult to build enough trust with a stranger to engage in conversation, but somehow, a smile acts as an invitation to speak, it is an act of generous curiosity and says, I don’t know you at all, but I appreciate your existence, and this can spark amazing things.

Smiling is one of those things that take incredibly little effort but can have enormous expected values. Such gifts are nothing short of magic.