“Smile though your heart is aching, smile even though it’s breaking...”
My Mum loved Nat King Cole and I can hear her now, singing that tune as I drove her to hospital for another round of chemo.
She smiled throughout her 11-year illness and somehow managed to cheer everyone else up.
Always Look On the Bright Side of Life was another favourite – and we played it as she slipped away, aged just 57.
But people are finding precious little to smile about at the moment – unless they’re amused by Halloween memes and spoof Brexorcist posters.
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Because the EU nightmare is going to drag on for another six months, and psychologists reckon it’s pushing folk to he brink. Hexit is causing Strexit.
And by October 31 millions of us will supposedly be suffering from some sort of Brexit-related anxiety.
One in three Brits already claim the EU debacle is impacting their mental health, according to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
We’re like kids caught in a bitter divorce battle – not knowing what the future holds when Mum and Dad go their separate ways.
And that insecurity is causing anxiety, about jobs, money, medical treatment... or just a general sense of impending doom.
So how about some hypnotherapy, meditation, acupuncture or cognitive behavioural therapy?
Now, I’ve suffered from anxiety and I’d never belittle the impact. But the idea that Britain is locked in a Munch-like Scream moment seems a little OTT.
Perhaps we just need to grin it out. Because a fascinating report from the University of Tennessee has revealed that smiling really DOES make you feel better.
Researchers looked at 50 years of data and 138 different studies into facial expression.
And they found that even faking a smile will boost your mood. Curling your mouth upwards triggers a message to the brain which then sends signals to the areas processing emotion, and that makes you feel happier.
Some people were asked just to hold a pen between their teeth, unaware it made their lips “smile”.
And the same effect was achieved. That, experts say, proves “the mind and body interact to shape our conscious-experience of emotion”.
Or as Nat King Cole and my mum would say “you’ll find life is still worthwhile, if you just smile”.
