Monday, March 23, 2009

Surprise. No, Really, Surprise!

We all know that body language carries most of the conversation. Apparently, according to communication specialists, we communicate much more with our posture, our gestures, our mouths and even our eyebrows than we do with our words. (Which makes the life of a writer like me a lot more difficult. You can feel sorry for me now. Seriously =(! See, now you do. )

I have learned recently that all these non-verbals, especially this muscular contortion of the strange monitors in our heads we call "facial expression", may serve a second purpose. To explain, I recommend an experiment. Find a snotty-nose kid with an expressive face and a lollypop at the nearest public park. Walk up to him, and yank that sucker right out of his head. Now notice his eyes become like little squinchy slits right before they start to leak fluid and he starts screeching for his mommy. That little commotion with his eyes happened for a purpose. In this case, anger actually limited his field of vision. "Angry face" tended to eliminate all irrelevant detail for Johnny and allowed him to focus. It also communicated to you very clearly that little Johnny was not your friend at that moment.

Notice what happens next. You turn blithely to explain to the kid's mommy about your little physiognomy experiment and -- realize that it is actually his extremely disgruntled 250-pound ex-con father who is already upon you. And he is swinging a baseball bat. Your eyes suddenly become wide, and your pupils dilate. Your eyebrows jump up, and your muscles go very unfortunately slack, causing your jaw to to drop, completing overall a very embarrassing picture in the history of your life. You take a quick, in-breath of air and you prepare to be squashed. In other words, you are surprised.

Whereas some non-verbals, such as posture, gestures, and so-called "angry face," may be very helpful in communicating information to others, other non-verbals can be very critical in receiving information from the world. Surprise, for instance, obviously helps us take in new information about our surroundings and become even more alert. With its bugged-out eyes, soaring eyebrows, and dropping jaw, surprise is actually a very healthy emotion and a healthy facial expression. (Try it with your face right now. It even feels good!) And I don't think we experience enough of it. Why? Not because we are too decent to be out harassing little Johnny's in the park, but because we are chronic control freaks. Our entire lives are scripted, we rehearse every moment. We strive for mastery. We even expect our own friends to consult with us before buying our birthday presents.

So what can surprise us? I think tragedy can. [...]

By: Chad

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