Making Faces

Have you ever looked in the mirror and, just to fun, see how many funny expressions you can make? I have though it has been a while. While I did not spend a whole lot of time doing it, I came up with over a dozen. I remember thinking at the time that that was a lot and that if I really tried, I could probably come up with a lot more. Boy, I had no idea.. In his new and delightful new book, "The Body," author Bill Bryson reports that the average person has the ability to make anywhere between forty-one hundred and ten thousand different facial expressions. To day the least, that is a long time in front of the mirror.

It also means we have an amazing number of tools in our arsenal when it comes to non-verbal communication. It is sure a lot more than I ever realized. Such a number strongly suggests that despite all our technological advances in communication, we have only scratched the surface when it comes to our ability to communicate with others. Imagine that. With our face alone, we have thousands of ways to tell someone else that we love or dislike them or approve or disapprove of their actions or want to or not get to know them better. In the world of communication, such a sizable arsenal represents a great deal of power. And that is just in the face!

In our current political environment, there seems to be a greater intensity of division than we any of us have seen in generations. Yet with the nearly 40 muscles in our face, the ability to make a significant dent in that troublesome reality is literally right in front of our noses. When talking with another who lets fly with opinions we abhor, with a simple moving of our mouth or squinting of our eyes, we can let that person know that their while their views are not to my liking, I still think they are a good person worthy of getting to know or, at least, spending time with. That strikes me as power worth using. And it all comes from making faces.