Faces, faces

When I was in Secondary school, I was in a class with a pair of twins. They were two Indonesian students who loved playing soccer, and their names were Mulia and Jaya. I spent a year or two in the same class with them, but we were never close, and so I have no strong memories of them to speak of.

On the road today, I saw a pair of twin girls, and suddenly I thought back to the days when I had last seen Mulia and Jaya. And I realized that if I were to meet just one of them at that very moment, I would easily mistake one for the other, or be at a loss as to which it was.

Logically, two separate human bodies imply the existence of two distinct, autonomous individuals. But for myself, and for what I suspect would be most of the world, it wouldn't seriously matter to us whether or not we could tell them apart. A part of me is okay with that, because neither of their individualities matter significantly to me. Yet another part of me wonders how disturbed I should be at myself for conveniently reducing the sums of their existences to their outward appearances.

... When I'm talking to a beautiful girl, sometimes there arise moments where it is imperative that I must be able to listen (or at least achieve some semblance of listening) to what she says. And so I look away. Because it's easier to tune in to just one channel. Dear adoring female readers, some of you may know this and some of you may not, but if a guy is looking intently at you (specifically the face, not elsewhere) while you're speaking, the look is really only there for two reasons: One, that your myriad charms are in full effect, and/or two, he wishes to signal to you that he is all ears for whatever you are saying. The relation of an apparent look to his actual attention is a tenuous one. I'm not going to stereotype all guys, but I think I would say that I strongly believe that many guys listen more deeply to a pretty girl when there's less visual interference. (Note to self: Sounds cool enough, but I really do need to consult an expert on this.)

Faces may speak volumes about people, but I think that more often that not, much of the complex meaning embedded in their features is utterly lost on us. Some people I know have the semi-solid belief that they can observe things about a person's character based on their newspaper photograph. I don't wish to dispute the possibility of such an ability existing; perhaps as we grow older, our eyes grow better at discerning truth that may possibly be writ plain on a person's face.

Or perhaps we simply grow more accustomed to seeing what we want to see in people. There's experience, and then there's prejudice. Alternatively... There's prejudice, and then there's experience. Maybe some people, over time, acquire eyes to see good or evil or hypocrisy or courage from a person's countenance, while others simply accrue biases and prejudices with age.

How much it matters though, I'm not so certain. A person can have a good face that corresponds with a good heart, but it doesn't mean they'll be good to you, and even stingy, cruel, and dishonest people can be good to their friends and family. Sure, it'd be great to have some reliable sense of what to expect from people, but I think that people will always find ways to surprise us, for both better and for worse.

----------------------------

The Great Sze once wrote something along the lines of, "If you can't be humble, at least hide away your arrogance in deference towards the social convention which states that we shall not disgust others with an open parade of our self-satisfaction."