During the COVID-19 pandemic, even with masks covering faces, people learned that a "smile" could be felt through the eyes. Healthcare workers who shared a lovely smile (visible only via the crinkle of their eyes) reduced patient anxiety by significant margins.
I think of a photograph I once saw in a worn leather wallet: a woman in her eighties, in a hospital bed, grinning with three remaining teeth and eyes that shone like wet stones. Her son, the wallet’s owner, said: “That was the day she told me the cancer was back. And then she said, ‘But look—the morphine is excellent.’ That smile? That’s my whole religion.” lovely smile