Sad Eyes Tell the Story of a Sad Heart

“How people look is often the same as how they feel. Over the years your face changes to reflect your predominate emotions”

Stuart Wilde, Silent Power

There have been many songs written about facial expressions. “Sad Eyes,” “Can’t Smile Without You,”  “These Eyes,” “Tears of a Clown” and “Bette Davis Eyes” are just a few of the songs that immediately come to mind. Notice that most of these titles involve the eyes.

Sad eyes tell the story of a sad heart, just like Bette Davis eyes tell the story of someone who is strong-willed but vulnerable.  Likewise, a face without a smile can tell the story of someone who has given his/her happiness away to a person who picked up and left; and a constant smile, or clown-like demeanor, can be hiding the truth of soul turned inside-out with grief.

Sometimes facial expressions tell the truth about how people feel, and sometimes we have to dig deeper behind a person’s exterior expressions to know what’s really going on inside of them. This is why Stuart Wilde says how people look is “often” a reflection of how they feel inside. We can’t always be sure, unless their face has changed to almost always reflect their internal state of being—as is the case of Laura Pennington in the 1945 film The Enchanted Cottage.

I’ve mentioned this film before. Laura Pennington is the town’s hag. At some point in her childhood she was told “you’re an ugly duckling,” and she believed it. She then became what she believed. She dressed her face to reflect the heavy feelings in her heart about her status as an ugly duckling. She wears that sadness daily across her face. And she also dresses her body in dowdy clothing to reflect her inner-belief about herself. In reality, Laura Pennington is not an ugly duckling, but she believes she is. And this belief, that weights so heavy on her heart, is projected to the rest of the world through her facial expressions and her body language.

At a World War II Canteen Party, she is encouraged to stop washing dishes and join in the fun. She enters the party room and immediately stiffens-up. Her body language becomes rigid. Her eyes are filled with fear. She immediately sits down at a table away from the crowd as if to hide herself from being seen. When a sort of square dance is called, several men make a trip toward her table to ask her to dance, but her body language immediately tells them she’s unavailable. Her eyes scream “Go away! Can’t you see I’m ugly and undesirable!” And the stiffness of her body is as icy to her suitors as the North Pole.

Over the years, Laura’s face has changed to reflect her predominate feelings of being ugly, worthless and sexually undesirable. It has also changed to express all of the fear she has of being further mocked, insulted or rejected by others. Unfortunately, by projecting all of her bad feelings about herself onto the rest of the world, she ensures that the world around her will see her in the exact same way that she sees herself. And so the world around her treats her in the exact same way that she treats herself. Every man who attempts to approach her at the Canteen party, turns around and walks away from her. They simply do as she has commanded them to do through her body language.

Sadly for Laura, what she commands others to do to her is the exact opposite of what she really wants them to do. She wants desperately to be loved. She wants intimacy, but her terrible self-beliefs and great fears won’t allow it to ever happen. In this sad example, no one is hurting Laura but Laura. And only Laura has the power to stop believing that she is homely and unlovable. She needs to look in a mirror and she what her face and body project to the world. Then she needs to challenge the beliefs that are tied to her body language. Once she develops positive beliefs about herself, her body language will relax and reflect her new lovable beliefs about herself. She will then project those to the world around her and she will attract people into her life instead of repelling them.

Take some time to study yourself in a mirror. What are your facial expressions saying to you about your personal beliefs about yourself? How about your body language? Is it rigid and stiff? Are you squirming at the sight of yourself? The way in which you react to yourself in the mirror is the same way many other adults will react to you because you will project your self-beliefs onto everyone else and they will respond accordingly. If you aren’t happy with what you see in the mirror, get in touch with the beliefs you are harboring and thus projecting about yourself. Challenge the negative ones and replace them with positive self beliefs. Then project the new beautiful you to the world around you and watch miracles take place.