“If you keep making that face, your face will stay like that”
I have a vague memory from a time when I was young, probably ten years or older, I was at a birthday party of someone who went to my school whom I did not like very much at this kid’s dad said this to me. I must have ben scowling at the time, I don’t really remember, but what I do remember is thinking how ridiculous this was for an adult to say. How could your face stay the same way for the rest of your life. I thought about it for a while and I concluded it couldn’t. I took things very literally when I was young. I am still working on that to be honest. I recently have been reading Marcus Aurelius’s meditations when this memory sprung into my mind. Aurelius has some of his own thought’s on scowling.
“A scowling look is altogether unnatural; when it is often assumed, the result is that all comeliness dies away, and at last is so completely extinguished that it cannot be lighted up again at all.”
Seems like the kid’s dad was onto something there after all.
