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Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Wonder and joy

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography, psychology on November 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »

What makes a good day a good day? Our daily experience is shaped and influenced by a countless myriad of forces, signals, energies and events. Most of those influences impact on us unconsciously….we neither register them, nor do we consciously respond to them. But they shape our days all the same.

That’s not to say that we can’t play a more active role. We can. We can be the co-creators of our daily reality. There are at least three ways to do that.

First, we can create the spaces and pauses which enable us to reflect instead of react. We do this by slowing down, taking time to more fully savour the experiences which nurture us.

Second, we can make choices, choosing to follow certain chains of thought, and choosing to let go of others. We can choose to keep doing, thinking or feeling the same thing, and so reinforce the path we have created, or we can choose to do something different, to think something different, and, yes, even to feel something different.

Third, we can seek out and/or create the contexts, events and environments which we know set us up unconsciously to experience what we want to experience.

Looking at this third option recently, I’ve decided there are a number of qualities which positively influence my day. There’s curiosity and wonder. There’s joy. There’s love, kindness and positive intention. The more I can seek, create, pay attention to, nurture any of those, the more I am setting my brain up to respond accordingly. Even when I’m not consciously choosing.

So, here is a photo I took the other day which I find fills me with both joy and wonder. It’s a photo of a wild fig tree which has been growing outside of my garden, and the Boston Ivy plant which has survived the collapse of the enormous old stone wall which runs along that border. That wall fell eleven months ago now, but the vine which seemed to tumble down with it survived, grew and, look – its leaves are a more glorious red this year than they have ever been.

Life amazes me.

I am amazed how a seed can fall somewhere apparently random, germinate, take root and grow….with no involvement from human hands. And I’m amazed at the resilience of plant which can be partially uprooted, which can have the vast bulk of its being destroyed, but can survive. No, not just survive, but thrive.

I didn’t add beauty to my list, but there is no doubt that contemplating beauty is good for the heart and the spirit.

So, here it is to share with you today……an image of beauty which I hope will set you up for wonder and joy today.

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The human paradox

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, philosophy, photography, science on November 5, 2020| 1 Comment »

It strikes me there is a paradox at the heart of what it is to be human. We each have a sense of being different from other people. We experience what Freud termed “the ego”. It’s a sense of “self”, of a kind of centre of the universe from which we observe and interact with everyone and everything else. Our immune system is finely tuned to quickly recognise anything that is “not me”, to identify it as a potential threat and to mount inflammatory and/or allergic responses to contain and/or expel it. We need to know that we matter, that we have value and worth, and whilst some of that comes self-referentially as “self-belief” and “self-worth”, a lot of it comes from that other, somewhat paradoxical theme – the fact that we are social creatures.

We need to belong. Complete isolation is a punishment – we call it “solitary confinement”. We need to find common ground with others, to be accepted by a family, a group, or a community. We need to find and express what connects us to others so that we can share our experiences with them.

This paradox of separateness and belonging is never “resolved” if we see them both as opposite, unconnected poles. Although they are undoubtedly difficult to reconcile, they need to be “integrated” – in other words we need to find how we can connect them to each other in ways which will enhance and develop both.

It’s important to grow and mature as an individual. It’s important to feel free, to have personal autonomy. It’s also important to grow as communities, as a species, (if we want to evolve), and even as an integral part of all Life on Planet Earth. We share the same air, the same water, the same limited “resources”. We create waste which cannot be contained. What I do affects others. There’s no getting away from that.

If an individual takes a strong exclusive position on one of these two needs, they lose their necessary connection to the other one. That results on the one hand in selfishness and narcissism, and on the other, as auto-pilot, group-thinking, which sets them up for domination and manipulation by others.

These things make us sick. They set in train the forces of dis-ease.

To be healthy and fully human we need self-belief and self-knowledge. We need freedom and autonomy. We need to belong, to form loving, caring and mutually beneficial relationships. We need to find common ground with others. And we need to see ourselves as inseparable individuals emerging from, and embedded within, the whole – the whole species, the whole living planet, the whole universe.

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Play

Posted in books, creativity, education, from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on November 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »

One day in Paris I came across this electric scooter sitting just beside this rather imposing statue of Condorcet. I had the notion that the serious thinker was looking down rather disdainfully at the scooter.

Even as I framed the shot I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition. Condorcet was a leading thinker of the Enlightenment, a champion of rational thought. That’s one large, heavy tome he has in his hand there and he has the air of someone who goes through life, eyes downcast, as he thinks seriously about everything.

For the Enlightenment thinkers rational thought was the way to liberate mankind, to free them up from the chains of superstition and enslavement by autocratic powers.

The electric scooter, on the other hand, is our right up to the moment symbol of autonomous freedom. In a city like Paris you can pick one up wherever it’s been left, pay your hire price using your smartphone, step on, and away you go whizzing along streets and passageways faster than pedestrians, weaving between static traffic jams of cars, pretty much as free as you’d like to be.

Yet a scooter, for many of us, is a sort of toy, isn’t it? I had a scooter as a child, as did my sister. In fact, just the other day there she found an old black and white photo of us both on our scooters, and sent it to me. Scooters back in the 1960s of course weren’t electric, but, apart from that is the modern version really that different?

I have a notion that one of the appeals of the electric scooter is something to do with play. Think back to childhood, or observe a child in your own family. From the very earliest of years children learn and develop through play. They explore, they discover, the try things out, pressing, pushing, bending, tasting, touching, looking and listening. They are like little sponges aren’t they? Absorbing every possible experience they can have minute by minute through the entirety of their waking hours.

Curiosity, then, that fundamental building block of learning, is expressed, first of all, through play. But there are three other qualities to play which come to my mind as I write this.

Play develops the imagination. Children create whole worlds to inhabit. Worlds of creatures, monsters, fairies, heroes. They dress up and assume roles. We even retain the phrase “role play” as an adult activity, don’t we?

Play encourages creativity. Children express themselves through drawing, singing, and making. Play is the medium through which creativity is released and nurtured.

Finally, play is social. Although a lot of play can be solitary, children adore games – games played with others. They are always asking to play games. Come and play this with me! Let’s play…..! They learn to connect, to interact and form relationships through play.

So, yes, the Enlightenment thinkers promoted liberation through rational thought, but are we missing a trick by reducing play to something less important, something somewhat trivial, even “childish”, to be left behind as we grow and mature into rational, thinking human beings?

Hey, you know me, and my “and not or” mantra – don’t we need BOTH? Don’t we need to inhabit, live, develop and grow both our “play” skills and our “rational” ones?

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”

There’s such a push now, during this pandemic, for people to work from home, and already it’s easy to find a host of articles about the dangers this poses to work-life balance. Yet, “home-working” could be liberating. I had a telephone conversation with a government worker recently and I could tell from the background noise that he was at home, not in an office, so I asked him if that was the case. He replied yes and said how much he loved it. He no longer had to commute for 90 minutes to work and another 90 minutes back home every day – so he felt he had gained 3 hours. And, he said, when he wanted a coffee he didn’t have to stand in line and pay a hefty sum for a cup any more, he could just reach behind himself to where he’d placed his coffee machine.

I’m exploring a new way of organising my time, and I’ll share it with you once I’m happy with it, but today I realise I need to factor in something else, something a bit more liberated, something a bit more imaginative, something a bit more fun – play!

Why don’t you join me, and spend at least a little bit more of today in play?

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Reflecting – necessary distance

Posted in creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, neuroscience, personal growth, photography, psychology on November 3, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Reflecting – I’ve long since thought this is a vital tool in life. There are two main modes of being – reactive and responsive. When some information, some energy or a substance evokes something within us our default is to react.

For example, when we see something threatening our “fight or flight” system kicks in fast and prepares us to do one of those two things…..fight or flee! It’s a complex system involving nerve pathways like the “autonomic nervous system”, certain nodes within the brain, like the “amygdala”, and a release of chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol. Accompanying all that are the organising influences of the emotions. It happens fast.

The energy of heat makes us react too. When we get too hot our body re-routes the blood flow towards the surface of our skin, and we start to sweat, to try to maintain a steady body temperature in the face of the environmental change. There are many such reactive feedback systems in our bodies to enable us to react to environmental changes. All without requiring any conscious, active role, ourselves.

When we inhale an allergen, such as pollen, then, if we have the potential to be “allergic” to it, we react instantly with sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes, or whatever, all provoked by an automatic activation of part of our defence system.

All of these are reactions.

But we humans can also respond. We don’t need to be 100% on auto-pilot. We respond, rather than react, by creating what the psychiatrist and author, Iain McGilchrist refers to as “the necessary distance”. We have this remarkable super-power to create a pause, a bardo, or a gap, between the stimulus and the response. We can stand back, stand apart, and change our perspective. This gives us our chance to reflect and it is a major factor in enabling us to move beyond an auto-pilot way of living.

Meditation practices of all types help us to step out of auto-pilot mode too. They strengthen our ability to become more aware in the present moment, and so open up the opportunity for us to play a more active role in our own lives. But reflection, I think, brings an additional benefit.

If a major benefit of meditation is heightened awareness and a breaking of the automatic stimulus-reaction loops, then reflection allows us to bring both our analytic functions of reasoning and our ability to imagine to bear. We can look back, unpick and unpack an experience and use the benefit of hindsight. We can “figure out” what happened and why and choose to act differently on any similar future occasion. We can think through a series of “what if”s to become aware of different potential outcomes.

As a doctor, I was encouraged to do this all the time. It is a common practice for doctors to reflect on their clinical work. That’s how we learn. That’s how we improve. But it’s the same in all walks of life. Stopping regularly to reflect frees us up – you could say it turns us from “zombies” into “heroes” (hero in the narrative sense – the main character of our own story).

There are many ways to build habits of reflection into your everyday. I think the top three are “Morning Pages” – where you write continuously to fill three pages of a notebook, preferably before you do anything else in the day; “Gratitude Journals” – where you end the day by thinking back and noting anything today for which you feel grateful; “Journaling” – whether in diary form, sketching, painting, whatever you prefer, but some regular time spent reflecting and then turning that reflection into something creative – a short essay, a poem, a letter to an imaginary friend, a letter to your older, or younger self, a cartoon, a drawing…..it’s up to you.

Oh, I should add, that it’s essential that all reflection is as non-judgemental as possible. It’s not about beating yourself up, or finding people to blame. It’s about learning and growing and a judgemental attitude isn’t going to help that.

What works best for you? How do you encourage yourself to reflect?

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Boosting immunity

Posted in education, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, neuroscience, personal growth, photography, psychology, science on November 2, 2020| Leave a Comment »

What protects us from infection?

The immune system.

What supports, encourages and maintains a healthy immune system?

The answer is lots of things, and no one thing by itself. There isn’t a magic pill or single technique which will keep your immune system healthy, but I thought it might be worthwhile just summarising some of the things which have a good chance of helping.

Nature

My first one is Nature. Japanese scientists have shown that “forest bathing” boosts immune activity. It seems that trees actually send out certain chemical which boost particular immune defence chemicals in the human body. But there’s probably a holistic, experiential element active as well. In other words, it’s probably not all down to particular molecules in the atmosphere. Because we also know that just spending time in natural environments boosts health….to the extent that Richard Louv describes Nature as “Vitamin N” and hypothesises that most of us are suffering from “NDD” – “Nature Deficit Disorder”. It seems that whether we are in a forest, in a garden, up in the hills, walking along the sea shore….all of these places are probably positive for our health and our natural defences.

Physical activity

There seems to be ample evidence that physical activity and many forms of exercise can both boost positive moods, and reduce unhealthy levels of inflammation which damage the immune defences. The bottom line is the more inactive your are, the worst it is for your whole system. Physical activity can include walking, jogging, gardening, sports, swimming, cycling – there’s a wide enough range there for pretty much everyone to find some kind of physical activity they can enjoy.

Diet

There are gazillions of articles about so-called healthy diets, or “anti-inflammatory” diets, or whatever. It’s mind-bogglingly confusing! But I think there are certain well established themes which run through every single “healthy diet”. It starts with eating mainly plants. Diets high in fruit and veg turn up again and again in research which identifies what seems to help to reduce chronic diseases, boost immune defences, and even encourage longevity. The second part is minimising what damages us – and that comes down to refined sugars and artificial chemicals more than anything else. How do you do that? Well, most simply by eating what is prepared by hand at home. The more processed, the more industrialised the “food” we eat, the more we are exposed to the harms. Ideally the more you can eat locally produced, seasonal foods, the better. And the more you can eat food from farms which don’t use artificial chemicals or industrialised techniques, the better. But the bottom line is “the less processed the better”. The third part is not eating too much – of anything! Whether you do that through an “intermittent fasting” diet, or simply by stopping snacking between meals, limiting consumption to what we need is good for us.

Supplements

I’m not a fan of supplements. Probably because I’m one of those weird people who finds it nearly impossible to swallow capsules and most pills! I also think we evolved to get what we need from Nature. However, again and again we are finding that Vitamin D deficiency makes us vulnerable. I’ve read a number of studies showing that vitamin D deficiency is most prevalent in patients who get the most severe forms of COVID. But vitamin D deficiency has been implicated in a host of chronic illnesses. So I do recommend it.

Other supplements? I’m pretty convinced about the value of two others when it comes to viral immune defence – Vitamin C and Zinc.

So, that’s what I take, and that’s what I’ve recommended my whole family takes. Vitamin D (4000 iu), Vitamin C (1G) and Zinc (15mg) every day just now. But you should find out for yourself, because we are all different sizes and ages and the amounts to take vary. So, be clear, I’m not prescribing these supplements for you….do your own research and ask health care professionals who trust, and, especially, ask your doctor if you are already taking medication. Immune defence is certainly not all down to supplements but they are worth some consideration.

Stress

There are undoubted, unavoidable links between the immune system, the nervous system and the endocrine system. Stress and emotional distress undermine the body’s defences. How you manage stress, and what practices work best for you, will differ from person to person, but it’s likely to involve some form of mental practice such as Meditation, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Heartmath, Visualisation, keeping a Gratitude Diary, or something like that. That’s in addition to spending time in Nature and taking exercise, both of which also reduce stress.

Maybe you already know what you can do to reduce stress, it’s just you find it hard to set aside the time to do it. Well, now is the time! Start today!

Emotional intelligence – there’s a link between stress and emotional intelligence – by that, I mean that learning to handle our emotions lowers stress, and that stress makes emotional turmoil worse. This is way too big a subject to tackle in a single blog post but I thoroughly recommend learning about your emotions, and how to handle them.

Love

I’ve left this one to last because I guess it’s the least “scientific” factor, but whether it’s longevity studies or studies of well-being, again and again human relationships are shown to be important. We need to be engaged, we need to love and to feel loved. We need that in relation to other people, to other creatures, to Nature, to Life. And that’s pretty tough in times when were are forced into social distancing, or even worse, social isolation. That’s why it’s so important for societies to make sure that whilst physical distancing might reduce the chances of spreading the virus, people are not isolated. We need contact, communication, simple checking in to see if we are ok, or if we need any particular help. We need to know that we are valuable, appreciated, even loved. Without that we are likely to suffer from more stress and less effective defences.

I am sure there’s a lot more you could add to this subject, but my bottom line is that I think we don’t pay enough attention to consciously, actively improving our well-being and our immune defences. If there was ever a time to do that, it must be now.

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Shape shifters of reality

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology on November 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

What influences how we experience the everyday? What shapes reality?

One of the ways our minds work is by creating frames and schema. We learn from our own experiences, from the stories of others, and from the messages we are given. All of these combine to create frames, or lenses, through which we filter the present moment. They also combine to create schema which are like pre-formed sets of perception, values, attitudes and behaviours.

There are lots of examples from psychology research – although, beware, because a lot of psychology research has been called into question and other researchers have failed to repeat the results of very famous experiments. But here’s an example of a type – volunteers are told they are being tested on a cognitive skill, say, perhaps, the ability to undertake certain mathematical tasks. But before they take the test, some are interviewed by a researcher who asks them to talk about the lives of the most elderly members of their family. Others don’t have that chat. After the test is complete, the researchers measure the time it takes the volunteer to walk to the exit. Those who had spent time talking about elderly family members before the test take longer to walk to the exit after the test. Bizarre, huh? This kind of experiment suggests that we can be “primed”. That pre-fashioned patterns of thought and action can be set in train unconsciously.

There are lots of different experiments which seem to demonstrate the same idea. These “schema” or “pre-fashioned” patterns of thought and action can be activated and influence how we experience and perform in the light of them.

We shouldn’t be too surprised by this. We know we are influenced by the messages which bombard us. Why else would advertisers spend billions to catch our attention? There’s a whole discipline now of “neuro-marketing” where companies can learn how to use how the brain works to catch our attention and to “prime” us to do what they want us to do – click “buy”, or vote “yes”, or whatever…..

This is one of the things underlying my choice of the title “Heroes not zombies” for this blog. I think that it’s easy to spend life on autopilot, allowing others to press our buttons, to convince us of their frames, to implant their schema in our minds. If we want to become the “heroes” of our own narratives, then we need to wake up, become aware of things like this, and then, perhaps, even consciously choose to create our own frames and our own schema.

So here’s my question today – for me, and for you – what are the frames, the schema, and the messages which are creating my experience of today?

Once we become aware of them, then we are able to make some choices – choose to accept them, or choose to make our own ones.

Let me finish with a simple example. If you spend the first part of your day “doom-scrolling” (you know that new term? Where you read story after story on your newsfeed, your twitter feed, your facebook feed, each one horrifying you, irritating you, outraging you, frightening you….but you can’t stop…you keep on scrolling)….so, if you spend the first part of your day doom-scrolling then what kind of day follows? What are you set up, or primed to notice, to pay attention to, to give your energy to? What if you chose to start the day some other way? With affirmations, reflection, gratitude…….you get the idea?

What if we started each day with some “conscious creation“?

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Conscious creation

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, philosophy, photography, psychology on October 31, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I guess none of us really paint scenes onto our actual windows these days but isn’t this beautiful? It gets me wondering what kind of scene or image would I like if I were to get, or make, a window like this? I wonder if I’d want a natural image of a beautiful tree, flower or bird, perhaps? Or would I want something highly symbolic, something resonant of myth and memory? Or would I want something visionary to inspire my thoughts of the future?

I suppose that in some ways a painted window like this could be a sort of vision board…..one of those walls where you collect images which inspire you in an attempt to inspire and focus your attention, desire and will to achieve what you want in life……or to attract it, “manifest” it…..or, at very least to colour your thoughts and your days.

I’m not a hugely goal-orientated person. I don’t set myself targets and “SMART” goals. But I know those things work for a lot of people. I suppose I prefer to set my values, my attitudes and my intentions, then open myself up to “emergence”…..to the realisation of experiences which I couldn’t have predicted. Maybe I prefer that to any attempt to force the world to deliver what I’ve already decided I want. After all, it turns out this universe has way more potential than any of us humans can imagine. So, I don’t really try to alive by organising my life around pre-determined end points.

What I do like to do is to repeatedly reflect and re-orientate my life around curiosity, wonder, joy, love, kindness and positive intention. So, that’s what I should represent on my painted window (or my “vision board”) – the images, symbols, stories and myths which stimulate and inspire my curiosity, my sense of wonder…..which bring me joy…….which stoke my feelings of love and kindness…..and which strengthen my intention to act, speak and think positively.

All of this constitutes a kind of “conscious creation” I think. A deliberate choosing to make and maintain reinforcing loops of the attitudes, values and behaviours which I want to experience in the world….which I want to manifest in the world.

Ok, folks, here’s my list (for me to return to as I move this idea forward, but also, if you wish, for you, if this inspires you or resonates with you).

Curiosity

Wonder

Joy

Love

Kindness

Positive intention

I’m going to use this list to consciously create the world I want to live in.

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Shining a light

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography, psychology on October 30, 2020| 2 Comments »

We are creatures of light. All the energy we need to live comes from the Sun. Plants capture the Sun’s energy and turn it into substances. Then the food chain sends that energy around the vast webs of Life, each creature nourishing itself on the energy captured by others. That includes us.

Without the light we wouldn’t exist.

But we humans need more than physical energy from light. We need what emerges when light shines on our world. We need it to see more clearly, think more clearly. We need it to make more sense of our lives and to live freely together.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories spreading around these days. There is a lot of suspicion and distrust. What’s the answer? More light. More transparency. More open sharing.

I think whatever you say, whatever you do, even whatever you think, sends waves of energy, information and materials out around the world in which we live. It influences others. It evokes emotions. It can spread understanding.

I think we need to use that consciously and deliberately. What positive, potentially nourishing light can I share today? That’s my question. I want to say, do and think whatever is creative, whatever spreads and encourages love and understanding.

Maybe that should be my new “mission statement”, my new “life goal”, my new “principles for living”?

Think, say and do today – with an intention to encourage and spread love and understanding.

In other words, shine a conscious light.

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The power of myth and symbol

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology on October 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I saw this door panel in the Chateau Chenonceau. Isn’t it wonderful? What an incredible piece of craftsmanship carving this scene. I love the waves below the characters and the clouds above them, and I especially like how the clouds break out of the frame.

The scene is Poseidon and Amphitrite (I think!), the God of the Sea and his wife. They are being blessed with a wreath and a flower (a lily perhaps?) by two creatures with human bodies, fish tails and wings……nymphs I presume…from Amphitrite’s ancestry.

Apart from the beauty of this image in it’s own right, it is laden with symbolism, as are many of the carvings and tapestries of that period. Exactly what the significance is of each symbol and, indeed, of the myths of which they are integral part can be uncovered to a certain extent with study and research.

I invite you explore this for yourself. What can you find out about the characters represented and what stories are there about them? What can you find out about the nymphs, about the cupid figure, the trident, the bow, the wreath and the flower?

Some historians say that in their time the people who had these works of art created were well versed in the answers to all those questions. They could “read” a scene in the light of the knowledge they’d gained. They had been told these stories, taught these symbols, and they wouldn’t just look at an image like this and think “how beautiful” – the work would evoke whole sets of emotions, memories and fantasies for them. When I think of that I feel we’ve lost something because most of us haven’t had the education which allows us to have a similar experience.

Symbols and myths are an integral part of human life. Creating works of art is fundamental to our nature. I was listening to a BBC podcast the other day about cave art and the experts said the wall drawings of bulls, aurochs, deer and so on date way back to the times of not just the earliest humans, but to neanderthals too. Some of the cave art was created in caves so deep that not only were they in perpetual darkness but there could be no real reason for human beings to go there….other than through sheer curiosity, or to hide and protect their art works.

Who were those images created for, and what part did they play in their lives….of both the artists and the spectators? We don’t really know. But whatever the answers to those questions there is no denying that we are a species which does more than hunt, gather and farm. We create and live with art. It’s in our bones!

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Changing what we see

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology on October 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »

A couple of years ago I took this photo from my house. I suppose it was actually the Moon which caught my eye, but, hey, an iPhone isn’t that great for capturing images of the Moon, is it?

However, as is often the case, once I loaded the photo onto my computer, I noticed something completely different – an orange face at the right hand side of the trees and bushes at the end of the field. Do you see it?

It’s not just an orange face, it looks like something with a wide open mouth, either in amazement, or in fear? By the way, the face is facing West which is where the orange glow comes from, as the Sun was starting to set as I took the photo.

Once I’d seen this face-like image I couldn’t ever un-see it. It’s the first thing I see now every time I look at this photo. Our brains function this way. From our very first days we have the ability to notice faces, and it doesn’t take long for a baby to be able to distinguish mum from other people. But it’s not just that we have a great ability to recognise individual faces, we seem to have the ability to see faces even where none exist. We see them in rocks, in trees, in bushes, in clouds, in the landscape….you name it.

Faces. Don’t you think that’s significant? We see faces way more than we see feet, or hands, or even whole human bodies. We are particularly attuned to seeing faces and face-like patterns. Surely that is linked to the fact that we are such incredibly social creatures. We are able to see a friendly face, or to be wary of an unfriendly one, almost in an instant. We don’t just have the ability to pick a familiar face out of a crowd, but we are able to “read” faces unconsciously. We “read” the emotion on a face, and we respond to faces with emotional reactions. We know there are people we like at first glance and those who we are immediately wary of. In fact, we have a tendency to rush to judgement, and it might take quite an effort to move past a “first impression”.

You know the phrase “if your face fits”, for example. We judge faces pretty much instantly. Again it might take quite an effort to move past that “prejudice”, that “pre-judging”.

Fortunately we do have those skills too. We are able to learn and to adjust. We become familiar with certain people and change our opinions of them as we experience them to be friendlier, or the opposite….un-friendlier, than we found them to be at first. This learning and adjusting is, however, not all about faces. It’s about behaviours, actions, words, conversations and shared experiences. Then we might begin to see someone differently.

It’s Halloween at the end of this week, so that’s partly why I thought I’d share this particular image with you today….it’s kind of a Halloween face, don’t you think? Or am I thinking that just because Halloween is approaching?

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