The Smiley Book of Colours

When Freud came to believe he was going to die between the ages of 61 and 62, and subsequently began seeing the two numbers everywhere he looked, which only intensifying the urgency of his superstition, he came to observe the value of selective attention in focusing the unconscious.

But what if we engineered this selective attention purposefully and aligned it with our emotional and mental well-being?

That’s exactly what photographer, children’s author, and educator Ruth Kaiser did in 2008, when she began seeing smiley faces everywhere she turned.

For the past four years, she has been collecting and sharing photographs “found” everyday smileys in the Spontaneous Smiley Project — an exercise in self-induced feel-goodness, inviting others to upload their own photos and donating $1 for each uploaded photo to Operation Smile, which provides free surgeries to children born with cleft lip and cleft palate.

Four years later, The Smiley Book of Colors was born, at once teaching (eternal) kids basic color theory and instilling in them the habits of optimism — a charming, light-hearted complement to the recent grown-up exploration of the science of smiles.

The images are paired with simple, poetic meditations on the optimistic life — truths we may be tempted, through years of conditioned cynicism, to roll our eyes at, but ones that remain, at their heart, beautiful and true.

Let a neuroscientist elaborate on the optimism bias and its benefits.