This is the twenty seventh article in a series I am writing for the JEANS section of 'The Nation'. The series is for children. Adults consider yourselves warned...you might re-discover a child within you! Scroll down for other articles in this series.
There are countless faces we encounter every
day. They are all unique, each one
different from the next. They are
different in terms of shape, complexion, the amount and angle of sunlight on
them, the direction in which they are turned etc. We might things some are prettier than
others, but we can be sure that someone else would disagree. Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. But let’s forget these things for now and
think about expressions.
There are faces without expression. It’s not that their owners don’t feel sorrow
or joy, are never happy or angry. If you
take just one face over a period of say 4-5 hours, you’ll notice that the
expression changes. Right now it might
be expressionless but the next moment you might see a smiling, happy face. Half an hour later you might see eyebrows
raised indicating surprise or eyes flaring in anger. You might see a faint smile dancing on lips
or a lip bitten in annoyance.
Think of all these faces or the single faces with
many expressions. That’s you, by the
way. What you see flash across the faces
of friends and strangers probably flashes across your face too, now and then.
What does a smiling face do to you? What does an expressionless face make you
think about? How about a face with
anger, annoyance, sneer, contempt or sadness written on it? What kind of faces would you like to
encounter from the time you wake up until you fall asleep at night?
In general we all prefer smiling faces to frowning
ones, don’t we? We even prefer
expressionless faces to angry ones, right?
Have you ever asked yourself what your face might be doing to those who
have to see it?
We are all human.
There are times when we are happy and times when we are sad. Sometimes
we are thrilled to be alive sometimes we are angry beyond belief. It is not easy to be calm all the time. But then again, do we gain anything by
spoiling things for others who have nothing to do with whatever made us angry
or sad? You are not to blame for
something that hurt or angered someone but you get to see the down-in-the-mouth
face when you would rather see a happy face, right?
Sometimes we can’t help it, our feelings decorate
our faces but if we think of what sad faces do to us, we might be able to
change ‘frown’ to ‘expressionless’. This
world has enough trouble without us forcing our troubles on other people. Smile and that makes others smile and might
even turn a sad face into an expressionless one and an expressionless face into
one that smiles even the tiniest smile.
Frown and the world become a shade darker for someone who has not done
us any harm and who might not even know us.
The next time you see a smiling face or a face
without an expression but more importantly without a frown, it might just be
that the person is hurting or angry but doesn’t want to spread the bad news
around.
Expressions are important. Think of yours, now and then. You can color the world so easily, you can
also turn it grey. Your choice.
It is cool to slosh around
You can compose your own music
Pebbles are amazing things
You can fly if you want to
The happiest days of our lives
So what do you want to do with the rain?
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