As butterflies change form from a caterpillar to a butterfly in a metamorphic manner, smiles change to accommodate the circumstances in a mental, obligatory manner.
At birth, the infant imitates her mother’s smiles; therefore they are a learned expression. They become more and more pure as the learning stage makes way for the true expression of joy with no reservations. Her smiles are totally independent and devoid of any outside stimulant. There is no barrier between her inner self and her outward expression. She is more linked to God than any other time in her life. The earth is like heaven where everyone is kind and sincere. If they aren’t, she creates her own world and pretends that they are.
Her smiles go through another stage when she starts to lose her admiration for them. Her smiles start to become diluted as she tries to separate her world from the grown up world. As she loses respect, adults aren’t quite the model citizens as they seemed to be before. Now they are only disciplinarians. As she starts to rebel against them, her smiles develop into a conniving sort.
As she becomes a teenager, her smiles become impressionable for peer approval. Then they become lustful as she tries to lure the opposite sex. If she is successful, she links herself to God again. But if her smiles fail, she is likely to lower her self-esteem and try to reach that same plateau again with several other lovers, some bad and some good. Until she reaches that divine state again, her smiles will always be lacking their credibility. They wander further away from their wholesome stage.
Once she is a mature woman, if she can remember how her pure smiles made her feel, she will try to maintain that state and live to retain that feeling. As she approaches her elderly years, she lives out the life she made for herself; bitter or sweet.
As she lies on her deathbed, those wonderful, joyful smiles come back with her linkage to God. But wouldn’t it be nice if she kept them her whole life?