A body smiles, like, 72 times a day. Where does that smile go?

Goldie Hawn, with the lightness of laughter and the depth of wonder, once mused: “A body smiles, like, seventy-two times a day. Where does that smile go? That’s what I want to know.” In these words lies a playful yet piercing question, one that reveals the mystery of joy. For the smile is not only a fleeting expression of the lips—it is the outward sign of an inward spark. If it comes so often, like waves upon the shore, then where does its energy travel when it fades? Hawn asks us to consider that perhaps the smile never vanishes, but journeys onward into the world, leaving traces unseen.

The ancients would not have found this strange. They believed in the unseen currents of life—the pneuma, the breath, the subtle energies that flow from one being to another. A smile, they might say, is not wasted when it passes from the face. It lingers in the air, it lifts the spirit of those who witnessed it, and it remains imprinted in memory. Thus, when Hawn asks, “Where does that smile go?” the answer of the wise is that it travels beyond us, like a ripple across the still waters, reaching shores we may never see.

History offers us many examples of this truth. Consider Princess Diana, whose smile became her emblem. Wherever she went, whether hospitals, orphanages, or crowded streets, her warmth transformed the atmosphere. People remembered her smile long after the moment had passed, carrying it like a flame in their own hearts. Though the physical act lasted but seconds, the essence of it lingered in the lives it touched. Her story proves that a single smile may outlive the body, echoing through the memory of generations.

Goldie Hawn, who has long studied mindfulness and the healing of the spirit, reminds us in her words that we often take the smile for granted. We release it, then forget it. But what if each smile is a form of energy, a seed planted in the soil of human connection? In this sense, no smile is lost. They gather in the invisible fabric of the world, shaping the mood of a room, a family, even a society. The laughter of children, the gentle grin of a stranger, the bright beam of a friend—these do not fade into nothing. They build, they accumulate, they sustain the human spirit.

The lesson is that we must treat each smile as sacred. If it can travel beyond us, then it is both a gift and a responsibility. To offer a genuine smile is to give a fragment of light, a piece of hope, a healing balm. And to withhold it, when it is needed, is to keep from the world a power that might have transformed another’s day. We are not mere individuals; we are givers and receivers of these sparks of joy, bound together by the invisible threads of our smiles.

Practical counsel follows: make your smiles intentional. Do not let them be only the idle reflex of politeness, but the deliberate offering of warmth. Begin your day with the resolve to give away what you cannot keep—to smile at the weary, to lift the spirits of the stranger, to place joy into the stream of life. And when you notice your own smile has faded, ask not where it went, but to whom it was given. In that reflection, you will find gratitude.

Therefore, O seeker, take Goldie Hawn’s question as a call to mindfulness. The seventy-two smiles of the body each day are not lost to the void; they are scattered like seeds across the fields of humanity. Some fall upon stony ground and vanish, but others take root, growing into trees of joy that may shelter lives you never touch directly. So, guard your smiles, honor them, and give them freely. For though you may not know where they go, the world remembers, and the spirit is nourished by their unseen journey.