It is a fact that our brain develops as we grow up, shaping its internal wiring and neural connecting through each interaction its owner has with other brain owners ecountered every day. More scientific evidence to show this process is appearing as I write and you read.
What makes humans so complex in relation to other mammals is the great capacity of our neocortex, developed as a defense mechanism against the threats to survival presented by other humans. The depth and variability of the feelings we express towards other human beings are as complicated as our amazing neocortex could make them. Where dogs may feel a very flat sense of belonging to their pack, for example, humans will combine this belonging to their family with touches of guilt, spasms of happiness and days of utter depression. There is simply no end to the amount of adjectives we can use on any given day to describe our emotional state.
Our ability to express and read more complicated feelings is also something we develop as we get older. A three year old baby starts making faces to express the very basic emotions it has just learned. Rage, happiness and fear look funny on a baby’s face because they look like a picture we would draw..they are missing important details that will only appear years later.
So, if you think of it, the way we develop wrinkles on our faces corresponds to our growing ability to express more subtle feelings, like happiness after a long difficult year of weeping, for example, which looks completely different from regular, innocent and aloof joy. As life provides us with all kinds of experiences, the increasingly mixed emotions we experiment reflect in the wrinkles that come out around our eyes or our mouth.
Those who live less tend to have fewer signs of character and empty looks, whereas those who live rollercoaster rides of risk or love tend to develop all kinds of expressive gestures that combine the smallest muscle moves here and there. It’s like the difference between a colour-by-numbers picture and a Van Gogh painting.
If feeling alive is associated to actually feeling emotions when we interact with the world, then, wrinkling our faces as we explore the shades of grey in each corner of our soul is the only way to continue growing and living life at its fullest.
So weird that publicity seems to depict operated and inflated flat faces as the ideal of happiness and full lives. Surrounded by luxury and fashionable items, these altered faces of rich individuals depict nothing but emptiness….more like the dog’s flat belonging than like a real person’s connection to the world.
Look in the mirror and talk to yourself. Just remark on all the different gestures you can make in a couple of sentences…the more wrinkles you have, the better you can punctuate or underline the meaning of your words. And so, the more intensely can you connect to other people around you…actually living each human connection to its fullest potential!
