Why is it that almost all our understanding of somebody's nature and character comes from his or her face? Is this a part of some natural process that makes our faces almost the center of attraction, communication, and understanding? What has our character, our nature, our soul got to do with our faces?.Perhaps the most important role that our faces play is that of communication. We speak with our mouth located on our faces. Verbal communication therefore finds its location here. Our eyes and facial expression take care of the non-verbal part, a very important aspect of any communication.
This too is the function of our face. Communication on the whole therefore takes place primarily through our faces.It is no wonder therefore that our faces are the prime focus in any social interaction, whether it is between two known people, or between two complete strangers.What amuses us is that our face goes beyond this basic communication function. It tends to stand for our personality, our inner nature, our character, our strength, our very existence as it were. To what extent this is true can be left to each one's ability to interpret and judge faces.
How this has come to be, and how much can we trust our instincts in interpreting faces is the problem that needs to be solved.Consider assumptions like ? a vile nature would show on the face, a beautiful face can be deceptive; an innocent face can hide a sinister character, etc. Certainly, we assume that faces show inner characters and that sometimes they can be deceptive. We try to judge people by how they look ? strong, meek and timid, beautiful or ugly, smart, naughty, and so on.Are we not making facial attributes stand for the individuals themselves? A beautiful face does not mean the character beneath is beautiful too.
These are the qualities we see on the face, and we assume that they must reflect similar qualities underneath the skin too. We do speak of inner beauty for sure.Whatever the case may be, we do not choose to be born with faces of any particular kind.
We get them by nature. We have no choice in this matter. Yet, our faces influence our lives a lot, even becoming the sole cause of success or failure in some cases.It is almost like natural selection working at another level ? at the level of society.
.The author is a freelance writer.
By: Amit Sharma