There are roughly 6,500 spoken
languages in the world today and I speak only one of them. Despite this
shortcoming I am an excellent communicator--and no, I didn’t invent a universal
translator. Rather, I am empathetic and smile at everyone, so much so that
strangers often feel inclined to tell me their life story without any
prompting. Many people think I look familiar to them, like someone they once
knew, a cousin or a neighbor. It’s a blessing and a curse, but I do enjoy
exchanging smiles with people I encounter. I enjoy passing goodwill to strangers
without them even realizing it. Jerry Seinfeld recounts how, as a kid, he would
go with his father on sales calls and his father would say to him “Watch this,
I’m going to crack that face”, meaning he would get a smile or a laugh. The
human face is able to communicate countless emotions without saying a word and
the emotions shared through facial expressions are universal. Proof of that is
how the same emojis are used the world over and everyone understands what they
mean.
As
an attorney I have also trained myself to recognize micro expressions--brief,
involuntary facial expressions that occur when a person is consciously trying
to conceal their feelings. Unlike regular facial expressions, they are almost
impossible to hide. In a new study, researchers defined 21 facial expressions
used to convey our emotions and found a computer model could tell them apart
with a high degree of accuracy. In fact, one of the first skills an infant
learns is recognizing facial expressions. By the time infants are five months
old, they can match the image of an emotional expression with its corresponding
vocal expressions. By age five, a child’s ability to recognize and label facial
expressions approaches the competence of most adults.
Now,
all of that’s out the window. If the eyes are the window to the soul, then
we’re in luck because, with the whole world peering out from behind
face masks, the only visible part of our face is our eyes. I feel so
disoriented, like Ariel the mermaid losing her voice. After decades of
communicating with my face I am at a loss. It hardly matters at the moment
since I rarely leave the house, but I have to adjust because I plan to wear a mask
in public for the foreseeable future. The bottom line is I’m still friendly,
and caring, and interested in you. You may not notice it as quickly as before
but if you take the time and look carefully you’ll see that I’m smiling with my
eyes.
