Smiles Make Smiles

After a long day, I was looking for somewhere to relax, and there’s no better place for that than a bookstore café.

Walking through the café, I saw a woman sitting at her computer and decided to spark up a quick conversation.

Her name was Nusrat, which I thought was one of the coolest names I’d heard in a while.

Nusrat was from a place in India called Jammu and Kashmir, and she’d moved to the US in 2019 to New York.

In New York, she got her master's degree at Columbia University and then moved to DC to work in global security.

Nusrat told me that she’d connected with one of her professors at Columbia, and that this professor led her to her current role in global security.

Though she has friends here in DC, she told me that she loves visiting her family back in India; for instance, she mentioned having taken a recent trip there in January.

When I asked her what brought her to this café, Nusrat said that she just loved the atmosphere and seeing people working around her, and I fully agreed.

Meet Nusrat

What brings her joy?

Similar to the positive environment that brought her to the café, Nusrat said her source of joy was simply seeing kids smile.

Whether it’s seeing them run around with a smile on their face or smiling with a parent, she said that it always brings her some joy.

In all honesty, it really is joy in its purest form - just an innocent child with something to smile about.

Thinking about it, this was a reminder that joy doesn’t always have to come from within ourselves.

Instead, a smile from someone else can bring you that same feeling, which was the awesome perspective that Nusrat seemed to keep in mind.