This should be heartening. In 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary announced that their Word of the Year was the emoji 'Face with Tears of Joy'. The OED chose this emoji because they said it best ...

For example, you can combine a face with tears of joy and a lemon to create a lemon with tears of joy. You can express ...

In the early days of online chatting people used different characters on the keyboard as a shortcut to convey an emotion. The happy face :) to convey happiness or joy. The frowny face :( to convey ...