Faces- What's behind yours?

 Faces…they’re what we see every day; they’re with which we are different from each other. The whole body is a unique creation of God, but the face is the supreme work of art or so I feel. Today, let me put up a question in your minds through this article’s end as to what we really see when we look at someone. Do you see the person your memory is familiar with? Or the story behind the numerous lines that run across them? Do you just identify and start fulfilling the reason for visiting? Or do you try and differentiate the emotions carried by each feature on them? Let’s face it. Maybe very rarely we do look into the eyes of a person and read them, but mostly we see, we speak, we respond and we leave. 

            But when I see a face, curiosity creeps in and I try to see what’s going on in their mind, what expression they seem to portray and more importantly…. What they’re trying to hide. The face of a new born baby, a toddler is the purest you can find. There’s no tint of the world’s greed in them, their eyes don’t calculate everything they see. They don’t know what’s ahead, and they’re least bothered. They are simply in the present… Innocence stays with them for they represent only what they are and nothing more, nothing influenced. The smiles are real, and perhaps that’s why we feel that babies are cute. Because they just experience the world around them and not judge it. And then again there’s a thin line between ignorance and innocence… When have we seen someone who is innocent and not ignorant in some or the other way? Food for thought…

             Then comes our faces, the ones that have grown out of the phase of innocence.  The faintest knowledge of the world, drastically starts changing our reactions to every word, every action. Some, like a plain sheet of skin…so flawless, emotionless…but working so hard behind it to conceal the true feelings lest someone reads them. Some are so beautiful, with sharp features and as if God took partiality over them. But maybe they earn to be normal like the rest of us, and wish people don’t treat them special because of their looks. Some faces love the attention and have lost their true beauty with a plaster of fame and superiority. Some faces are so complex that it is hard to even fit them into our world of thought. It is as if they exist in a parallel universe… there’s no category to them… they are purely a species on their own. Some are born beautiful and come carry their absolutely normal face with so much grace that it seems charming.

            I used to wonder a lot about the history of the faces… how it has changed over the years, how it may have looked without the scars maybe. But I realized that every face we’re familiar with is not because of the face itself. It is because of a combination of the face, the person, expressions and emotions. So it is true that the basic purpose of the face is fulfilled… to recognize someone. But just out of curiosity, try reading the faces and see how your opinion changes of them. I thought I had mastered it all, mastered the art of living behind a mask of expressions on my face until one fine day. That one day, someone saw through my mask and I saw through theirs and we both realized something. There’s no use in faking any expression for anyone. As conditioned as we might be, the least we can do is change ourselves to make others happy. Because at the end of the day, we go to bed and cheat no one but ourselves. Food for thought… see what’s behind your face before someone points it out!