Pondering "Eyes Are the Window to the Soul"

Author's Note

As I was browsing the HubPages forums, I saw a thread about the eyes being the window to the soul. Rather than post my thoughts on the forum thread, I decided to write them in this Hub instead. That's what here - my own thoughts and perceptions (whether they're correct or not). I wanted to make it clear that what's presented here is not based in scientific fact. Why post the Hub then? Because before I wrote it, I looked for the right kind of scientific information to address the subject, but all I found (at least within the time-frame in which I'd hoped to find it) were references to religion. I may return to this Hub in the future if I'm able to find the kind of information for which I was searching. In the meantime, this Hub should be considered, "creative writing".

Some eyes can be misleading, but some people's eyes really can be fairly accurate "windows" to the soul. Sometimes, though, people don't read eyes well, because they aren't tuned in enough or they're people who are easily fooled. Sociopaths are known for being able to "do honest eyes" and come across (to a lot of people) as sincere. So, it's not as simple as just trying to read "eye body language".

There's often something more subtle than just whether someone looks you right in the eye or whether he thinks that by opening his eyes wide you'll believe he's sincere. Maybe it has to do with pupils, or narrowing or changes in capillaries. Maybe how we read the subtle messages in eyes involves also processing other facial expression and body language.

When referring to someone who is obviously bored, we'll often talk about his eyes "glazing over". Eyes obviously don't really glaze over, but the almost universal use of this expression suggests some sort of invisible barrier that covers the eyes when a person is bored. I don't happen to know the origin of the phrase,"glazing over". Sometimes these things start in a book, movie, or well known speech after they're struck a chord with a lot of people, become adopted, and eventually become commonplace. It doesn't matter for the purposes here.

"Glazed over" and bored eyes aren't the only eyes that seem to have an invisible barrier in front of them. When people are closed off to someone nearby they seem to a have a different kind of invisible barrier in front of their eyes. Sometimes being closed off is a matter of the person's being dishonest. Sometimes it's a matter of his not liking another person, other people, or the situation in which he finds himself. To the person who has perceived this kind of barrier, there's definitely a difference between the way we perceive glazing over in boredom, and the way we perceive being closed off as a result of not liking someone or something. There are times when we can see a change even in the eyes of someone who otherwise likes us or loves us, when the discussion or situation shifts to something that brings out, perhaps, envy or resentment in that other person. We can see otherwise kind or "neutral" eyes go from "regular" to cold within a fraction of a second. When we think we perceive that invisible barrier, it certainly doesn't come across to us as "invisible". Somehow it seems as visible as the person, himself. (I say, "think we perceive", because it's probably safest to acknowledge that sometimes what we perceive as real isn't correct.)

It's always struck me that the barrier that comes from one person's not liking the other (or the barrier that comes from resentment or envy, which is essentially the same as not liking the other person at least temporarily) is a very different looking barrier than the one that can be perceived in an angry person. While there seems to be a cold stillness in the eyes of the person who doesn't like someone, the barrier that seems to be there when a person is angry (but not raging) can seem like a thicker barrier. Yet it can also clearly seem to have more life in it than does the "less dramatic" barrier that shows dislike for another person or the situation.

From what I seem to have noticed about these barriers, it has always seemed to me as if, once anger has reached a certain degree of intensity, it seems to dissolve any invisible barrier before the eyes and become the actual expression within the eyes. When anger runs high but seems clearly to be caused by, and mixed with, emotions other than pure anger; it can seem as if that kind of anger could be said to be "hot" anger. It can seem as if it's hot anger that dances likes flames in a person's eyes, rather than remaining behind the thin, invisible, barrier that may have seemed to be there before the anger grew into "flaming anger".

There's a different kind of anger that can show in a person's eyes, though. From what I've observed, it's not a kind that shows up in most people's eyes (not even when they're very angry). This kind of anger is more of a "cold, dead" anger that appears to include a thick invisible barrier before the eyes (so thick, in fact, it seems to replace all emotion in the eyes and, rather than remaining before them, become them).

This kind of anger seems to involve a situation combined with another person's triggering of it ("pushing the angry person's buttons"). It can seem as if, when this kind of anger gets triggered, a person who has triggered it dissolves into an object in the eyes beholding him/her. I'd be tempted to describe the cold, dead, look and thick invisible barrier as "hatred" (even if it's temporary hatred), but the difference may be that even the cold, dead, eyes of hatred have a thinner invisible barrier before them than do the raging eyes of cold, dead, anger. The changes that take place in "regular" angry eyes don't generally make the person observing them feel as if the angry person has turned into someone or something different. Instead, normal "hot" anger just makes that other person seem to be an unpleasant version of himself. With cold, dead (but raging), anger, the person who observes the eyes may feel as if the individual he knows has left his own body and become someone else.

On a much lighter note, there are the eyes of the person who is laughing. Laughter is generally like hot anger in that it takes over the expression in the eyes. In a person who is forcing or faking laughter, no laughter shows in the eyes. (That's what helps tip us off to the fact that they're faking. In fact, when it comes to faking, it isn't just eyes that appear without change in emotion. A similar flatness, or shallowness, can be sensed in a voice, or in a person's writing. Whether it's in a person's voice, writing, or eyes, lack of warmth and an odd shallowness are generally the tip-offs of falseness.)

Genuine laughter doesn't remain separate from a person's a eyes. It's that simple. Like genuine laughter, genuine smiling shows in the eyes too. Smiles can be big, broad, smiles; or they can be little, Mona Lisa-like, smiles. Whichever a genuine smile is, it will show in the eyes.

If there are two things that dissolve all hints of any invisible barriers before eyes, those things are laughing and smiling.

Benign mischief is something else that shows in eyes. A child who plays a joke on a family member(perhaps by doing something like hiding that person's hat) will have eyes that have dancing, sparkling, giggling, mischief in them.

Sadness often shows in eyes, of course. The person living with despair or great sadness often lives "on auto pilot", because he pushes the sadness out of his mind in order to be able to function on a day-to-day basis. The person with this kind of sadness may have perfectly honest eyes but eyes with a different kind of invisible barrier before them. This is a thin invisible barrier that can make a person seem distant or closed off, but that barrier can seem thin enough not to indicate that the individual is hiding something. More, it seems to indicate that as much as he may try, the individual cannot hide everything.

The tired or beaten "soul" can usually be seen in the eyes of the person whose soul is tired and beaten down, perhaps because such a person has gone beyond responding to his circumstances "in his eyes"; and his sadness isn't just to the degree that shows through a thin, invisible, barrier. It's the kind that has dissolved any barrier and taken over the whole expression in the eye.

I'm guessing that how much any emotion, or element to a person's nature, shows up in his eyes may depend on the degree of whatever it is he has in his soul. It may also depend on how well a person responds to, processes, and manages his own emotions and instincts. For example, the person who quickly manages his own anger and reduces it to a matter of reason, rather than emotion, isn't as likely to have as much anger to show in his eyes as someone who lets his own anger run wild.

It's important to again say that I don't know if any of these observations/perceptions that seem right to me are actually correct. It's all just - as they say - "how I see it".