WATCH the faces as you walk along the street! If you get the habit
of noticing, your observations will grow keener. It is surprising to
see how seldom we find a really quiet face. I do not mean that there
should be no lines in the face. We are here in this world at school
and we cannot have any real schooling unless we have real
experiences. We cannot have real experiences without suffering, and
suffering which comes from the discipline of life and results in
character leaves lines in our faces. It is the lines made by
unnecessary strain to which I refer.
Strange to say the unquiet faces come mostly from shallow feeling.
Usually the deeper the feeling the less strain there is on the face.
A face may look troubled, it may be full of pain, without a touch of
that strain which comes from shallow worry or excitement.
The strained expression takes character out of the face, it weakens
it, and certainly it detracts greatly from whatever natural beauty
there may have been to begin with. The expression which comes from
pain or any suffering well borne gives character to the face and
adds to its real beauty as well as its strength.
To remove the strained expression we must remove the strain behind;
therefore the hardest work we have to do is below the surface. The
surface work is comparatively easy.
I know a woman whose face is quiet and placid. The lines are really
beautiful, but they are always the same. This woman used to watch
herself in the glass until she had her face as quiet and free from
lines as she could get it--she used even to arrange the corners of
her mouth with her fingers until they had just the right droop.
Then she observed carefully how her face felt with that placid
expression and studied to keep it always with that feeling, until by
and by her features were fixed and now the placid face is always
there, for she has established in her brain an automatic vigilance
over it that will not allow the muscles once to get "out of
drawing."
What kind of an old woman this acquaintance of mine will make I do
not know. I am curious to see her--but now she certainly is a most
remarkable hypocrite. The strain in behind the mask of a face which
she has made for herself must be something frightful. And indeed I
believe it is, for she is ill most of the time--and what could keep
one in nervous illness more entirely than this deep interior strain
which is necessary to such external appearance of placidity.
There comes to my mind at once a very comical illustration of
something quite akin to this although at first thought it seems
almost the reverse. A woman who constantly talked of the
preeminency of mind over matter, and the impossibility of being
moved by external circumstances to any one who believed as she
did--this woman I saw very angry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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