LIFE : GESTURES

When people are born, they all have the ability to express their emotions through gestures and expressions. Everyone contains facial emotions that are known universally. By deciphering these facial expressions, people can react to certain situations; thus, they can show expression to an environment that is both proper and fitting. Understanding one’s emotions is the key to gaining acceptance of that person and becoming a well-rounded social species in the human race.The face is the key to understanding another’s emotions. There are a combination of muscles, nerves, and blood vessels in the face that allow it to form vast amounts of expressions. These facial expressions are linked to certain emotions that are known universally like surprise and disgust.

Everyone knows the smile is linked to happiness and the frown is linked to sadness. These facial expressions are in everyone’s genes; thus, by understanding one’s face, a person can read their emotions at the same time.There are also some problems in deciphering these universal emotions. For example, in some cultures, it is respectful to smile whenever there is a person in high position. Maybe the person is actually feeling sad or really depressed; however, the situation forces the person to put on a smile, which is linked to the expression for happiness. If a child is abused, he might not be able to express his feelings at all.

The environment, culture, and parents affect the role in emotional expression. If a doctor tried to help someone from a different country, he might not be able to tell his problem just from his facial expression. The patient might just smile at him the whole time showing that he is in a high position and it is only respectful for him to show it. However, the doctor might be disgusted since he should not be smiling when he’s sick or has a problem. This proves the point that culture does play an important factor to the role of emotional expression. People act certain ways to the environment they were brought up in and the way their parents taught them to what was proper and fitting.

The face is very important to understanding and reading another’s emotions. It is also important to determining how to react in certain situations and to survive in the world. Every culture has a different way to showing emotional expressions so there is always the possibility of reading an emotion the wrong way. Thus, universal emotions should be treated vigilantly since they are not taught the same in different environments, cultures, and parenting but they should also be read and interpreted since they all contain a significant message to whether the person is in need of aid or time to be alone.

By Jim Smith