Losing Face
“We’ve only just met, and you might be a serious guy, but your face shows what we call masking; it takes on a more serious look than it had before and shows less expression,” he says.
I nod as my blank stare meets his earnest eyes. Reaching down, I grab the seat of my chair to steady myself as the exam room whirls and spins.
Then he says, “It’s a common early symptom…and while it’s very subtle in your case, I know what to look for, and I can see it.”
Dr. T., a neurologist to whom my primary care doctor has referred me, speaks these words as he diagnoses me with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 48.
I can only imagine the look on my face.
A few months later, I walk from my campus office to a nearby classroom where a small production team awaits. We are filming a new video for the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin, where I work as a professor and academic dean. As the production team finishes filming me, the producer says, “I really like what you said, but could you do it again with more expression in your face?” I keep trying to do what he asks, and hark back to my meeting with Dr. T. After three takes, with my increasing efforts to be animated, the producer says, “Much better! I think we’ve got what we need.”
Still locked in the Parkinson’s closet, my body will slowly reveal my secret and there is nothing I can do to stop it.
Those who have Parkinson’s tend to lose some of their ability for facial expression, which has numerous implications. We can take on a more serious appearance, such that people wonder if we are sad or angry. Over time, we may blink less often and may seem to stare coldly at people or things we love; and sometimes people mistakenly assume that a flatter face correlates with a depressive state, diminished cognition, or less facility with carrying on a conversation.
The mask Parkinson’s forces us to wear is a cruel one. When we feel intensely and desperately want to share our emotions, we might be incapable.
The Significance of Faces
The first time I recall thinking in any sustained way about the human face was in graduate school, in a course on the theories of developmental psychologist Erik H. Erikson. He wrote about the earliest interactions between an infant and primary caregivers, and of the powerful effect that their faces have on the baby. A kind, responsive, and empathic face conveys love, nurture, and hope. Over time, and when joined to consistent offers of support for meeting the infant’s needs, these face-to-face encounters help the infant develop a sense of being valued, safe, and deserving of benevolent care, qualities that then become the infant’s own and shape his or her sense of self.
This dynamic of interpersonal exchange continues as we age and mature. We cultivate and develop these same vital qualities in face-to-face encounters with trusted others at any age and throughout life.
In my 40s, I read the work of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who offered his own take on the importance of faces. He said that another person’s face, when we encounter it, makes an ethical claim on us that bids us to take responsibility for how we treat one another. For Levinas, “the face is the most exposed, most vulnerable, and most expressive aspect of the other’s presence… [the] face speaks to me and thereby invites me to a relation.”[1] Moreover, another’s face “offers itself to [my] compassion and [my] obligation.”[2] Face-to-face encounters, it turns out, change us; they humanize us because they obligate us to one another, calling us to become the best version of human we can become.
Looking in the mirror, I can see that, in a sense, I am losing face with Parkinson’s. The changes are subtle, as Dr. T. said, but they’ll likely intensify with time. I wonder what Levinas would say about this loss.
I know that despite losses to the ‘most expressive aspect of my presence,’ I feel more human than I ever have—more vulnerable and exposed, yes, less attractive and desirable, perhaps, but also more authentic and real, open and connected, daring and alive. Whatever role vanity played in my life previously, Parkinson’s has challenged and diminished it. Michael J. Fox was right when said that with Parkinson’s you have to throw vanity out the window. Doing so has been much easier than I would ever have imagined. Although I’m still self-conscious about the effects of Parkinson’s on my physical appearance, maybe Janice Joplin was right, too, when she said, that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.[3]
Living Face-to-Face
On the one hand, we put too much emphasis on faces, and especially on improving and maintaining them, which requires a lot of emotional energy. We fret over them becoming wrinkled, blemished, or less supple than they once were. We spend lots of money on trying to make them more attractive, with products and even surgeries, striving to reach norms of beauty that our society tells us are ideal but, in fact, are unreachable. Women often bear the heaviest burdens related to these norms and social expectations, but men suffer from the weight as well.
At the same time, faces often are not ascribed the status they deserve. Genetically, human beings are 99.9% similar, but science has confirmed the singular status of every human face. In fact, a prevailing theory holds that, over time, human faces evolved with differences for a particular reason, namely, so that we may tell each other apart. Different faces reflect our standing as unique persons.
Too frequently, we do not see faces for what they are, namely, a one of a kind reflection of something mysterious, valuable, and sacred; a numinous expression of one who encounters us and changes us. At least I have not always seen faces this way. As a result, my face-to-face encounters have been less frequent, less valued, and more rushed than I want them to be. Too often, a phone call, email, or text message has replaced them.
My doorbell rings. It’s a warm Sunday afternoon in the fall of 2017. I peer out our front bay window and there stands my friend Robert. A tall man, he has a warm smile and piercing blue eyes. We’ve known each other for several years, ever since our kids were in preschool, but it’s been months since we’ve seen each other. He’s also a professor at UT, and we both live with crammed schedules.
I open the front door and see that he’s ridden his bike, which he’s leaned against our front gate. A devoted father, the trailer bike attached to his bike often holds one of children. But today he’s by himself.
He says, “I’ve been thinking about you and I decided to ride over and say hello.” Unannounced and uninvited, his visit reminds me of the way it is with kids, and of how it used to be among grownups, and it makes my day. I tell my wife Tracey about this visit and pledge to follow Robert’s example of dropping by unannounced for a visit with friends, for no other reason than they’re on my mind.
Four months later, I would attend his memorial service after he suffered a massive stroke and died.
I no longer take any face for granted. As a matter of fact, I want to see more faces, more often and more authentically.
I want others to see my face, too, even if what they see is less expressive than I would like.
Seizing opportunities for more empathy, love, and hope, more compassion and obligation—just as Erikson and Levinas said can happen when we come face-to-face with each other—I am becoming more human.
_______
[1] Emmanual Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Philadelphia: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 198; http://braungardt.trialectics.com/philosophy/20th-century/emmanuel-levinas-1906-1995/levinas-face/
[2] Jill Robins, Ed., Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 48.
[3] Janis Joplin, “Me and Bobby McGee,” Pearl, Columbia Records, 1971.
Photo by Daniel Fazio on Unsplash
Allan Cole is a professor in The Steve Hicks School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin and, by courtesy, professor of psychiatry in the Dell Medical School. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2016, at the age of 48, he serves on the Board of Directors at Power for Parkinson’s, a non-profit organization that provides free exercise, dance, and singing classes for people living with Parkinson’s disease in Central Texas, and globally via instructional videos. He also serves as a Community Advocate for ParkinsonsDisease.net, writing columns about living well with Parkinson’s. He is author or editor of 10 books on a range of topics related to bereavement, anxiety, and spirituality. Currently, he is writing a book on counseling people with Parkinson’s disease, which will be published by Oxford University Press.
Follow him on Twitter: @PDWiseBlog