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When I first saw this photo from Bar Beach of 1971, that smile confused me. A man tied to the stake, a British priest beside him, soldiers around, and he is smiling like he is in a family picture. I could not understand it, so I had to enquire more. What I found out is that it was not happiness. There are reasons people do that, and some of them are medical. For many of those condemned men, smiling was pride. They knew the whole country was watching. Crying would give the crowd what it wanted. So they chose to smile to die like a man. Some of it was acceptance. By that day, they had already accepted what was coming. The fear had turned into resignation. Some of it was the prayer. That man in white is a priest, there to assure him of forgiveness. For a Christian man, that last prayer can bring peace, and peace can look like a smile. Medically, the body also does strange things at that point. Extreme fear releases adrenaline, which can cause a nervous, wide smile you cannot control. The brain also releases endorphins, its own painkillers, which can make the person feel calm and even euphoric. Doctors call that dissociation, where the mind separates itself from the pain to protect itself. So that smile I kept staring at was not joy. It was pride, prayer, and the brain protecting itself at the last minute.