Face is Not the Index of the Mind

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Face is the index of the mind' is an old proverb that has undergone a sea of change and in fact a metamorphosis in the modern world. It is true that your face reflects your mood. When you are happy or joyful, your face radiates it and your activities are induced by your happy mood, through your smiles or laughs and through your intention to share and celebrate your happy mood with others; when you are sad or feel sorry, your mood is reflected by your dullness and rigidity, through the outburst of tears that you shed, when you get isolated from the company of others and when you unusually resort to doping.
Though by nature, your face is endowed with or blessed with the ability of reflecting your feelings, it varies according to your age. When you are a baby or a child, your feelings are reflected quite naturally and also instantaneously get changed, when your mood is changed by the intervention of a third party. As you grow in age, you are somewhat slow in reacting to the given situation and so your face also reflects it slowly.
But in this modern world, due to various extraneous circumstances, you are forced to live rather mechanically or artificially; you are not living by your natural instincts, whether it be your home or it be your office.
When you are living at home in the company of your family members, say your wife and children, you are natural in your behavior with your spouse and so your face reflects it in a natural way according to your mood or feelings, when you are romantic or angry. But, as a responsible parent, your behavior pattern changes when you are dealing with your children. Even though, you are filled with full of love and affection for your children, your face does not overtly expose or express it, since you do not want to create an impression that you are too liberal towards them. Similarly, when you are in an embarrassing economic situation, through your sublime or subdued behavior, you do not want to get yourself exposed lest it will affect your family members. Therefore, it goes without saying, even among your family members, mostly you behave rather artificially and in your day to day life your face does not reflect what you actually feel and so your face is not the index of your mind.
Your behavior pattern in the external world vis-à-vis third parties is entirely different and it is mostly artificial which you may call as business like, tactical, strategic, professional and diplomatic; it is needless to say that in the course of your behavior pattern with the external world, your face has no scope to express your natural feelings.

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When you are a business man, in the course of any business conversation that you hold with your customer, your motive for profit predominates and your customer has no scope to gauge it from your facial expression;
When you are an actor or actress, even though you are in a cheerful mood, you have to act only according to the given situation, say you have to cry or you have to be cheerful according to nature and situation of the character or role you are playing and your face does not and in fact cannot reflect your actual feeling or the personal mood you are in.
When you are a politician, whatever might be your personal opinion or feeling, your face has to reflect only the mood of your party and you have no scope to reflect your own. Therefore, a common man can not assess you based on the expression of your face because it does not reflect what your mind thinks about a particular issue or policy.
When you are a diplomat, you are sent to lie abroad. Hence, a foreigner who hears you has to assess you based on your soft and courteous words; certainly he cannot gauge xou on the basis of your facial expression.
When you are a lawyer, when you are dealing with a client's case and in the course of the arguments of his case, since you are strategic and your motive of winning your client's case predominates, your face does not reflect the truth even when you are telling lies in the name of defending your client or winning his case.
If you are a doctor, your professional ethics actually determines your behavior pattern and you are sometimes forced to console your patient even with a blatant lie with honey coated words, stating that there is nothing to worry about, even if your patient's health is actually in a danger zone. Of course, your patient cannot find anything from your facial expression.
Thus in the modern world, due to various extraneous factors, which actually guide your mode of behavior, your face is not the index of your mind.

1.The Hindu (daily)

2.The Deccan Chronicle (daily)