Time Magazine Article
When I travel, I absolutely LOVE to meet new people. I get to sit next to someone who may be radically different than me that I might not otherwise encounter in life. And I have a good chance to have a conversation with them and get to know them! Of course not everyone is interested, and I absolutely respect that, but when I do find people who are interested to talk–I love learning about them.
On the last leg of my journey last night, the young gentlemen sitting next to me and I started up a conversation and had an enjoyable time getting to now each other. I told him about what I did and he shared with me what he did. He works at a company selling funeral supplies. It’s not something you expect to hear, so I was intrigued.
Who would want to sell caskets?
He said if you had asked him five years ago where he would be he wouldn’t have guessed he would be where he is–selling funeral caskets, but he actually likes it. It’s a fast-paced business!! When people need a casket, it can’t be on back order. Things have to move and quickly he told me. There was some humor in that!
As I looked at his face, he gave me a strong feeling by his facial features that he was a republican because he resembled a well known republican. I was dying to ask him, so I took a risk–to learn if I was correct or not. I asked him if I could ask a personal question, and he said sure.
When I asked if he was a republican, he thought about it and then grinned and said yes, he was. He said he was open to both parties, but that he had a preference for republican policies. He was surprised at what I did. It surprises me when I keep getting it right. Facial profiling has merit, without question!
I explained to him that there are correlations between facial features and personality traits and that he shares features of other republicans I know. He was rather stunned and didn’t know what to think. I don’t blame him. He can be a skeptical person by nature, and I like that!
After we chatted for a while, he said he wanted to read a book, but that he had something I might enjoy reading, and he handed me TIME magazine. He kindly said, “I thought you’d enjoy reading this. I thought it was a good article” as he handed it to me.
I was so touched by his kindness, and I was thrilled to read it. It’s an interesting article and well written. I like that it talks about how our emotions influence our decisions as that is a key point I talk about frequently. There was a lot of interesting points to the article. They point out truth and lies by both parties and gives you responses from the President and Romney.
If you can pick up a copy of this, its well worth reading!
Thanks, Rich!! It was a real pleasure to meet you yesterday!
You know it’s so weird because I was just thinking about this last night and it’s one of those things that I think about a lot, but would never consider discussing or mentioning to another person. I’ve noticed that with certain people who have certain similar features, they are unbelievably similar in personalities or other characteristics. This is very difficult to articulate and I’ve actually never tried to before. So let me start with a basic example. Last night while browsing online, I happened to come across a picture of one of the Baldwin brothers. The younger one, I think. Stephen. Anyway, the first thought I had when looking at his picture is: he is not intelligent. He is incapable of grasping certain concepts and theories and understandings about the world. I have absolutely no idea what he even does for a living and I have never seen or heard him speak, but my feeling is so strong and I don’t mean it in a judgmental way- it just seems to be true. And it may be that after hearing him speak, I could change my mind to it being a lack of social intelligence and not necessarily intellectual capacity. Sometimes you have to hear someone speak or have a conversation with them before you realize it’s not a diminished intellect, but a social deficiency that gives off that impression. Anyway, all of this feeling I had about him came simply from looking at his mouth. It has something to do with his lips and the way they stick out or he pushes them out. There are other people out there that I see who have the same kind of mouths or lips and I always have an immediate and gut reaction to them. I know this sounds utterly insane, but it’s true. There are tons of other examples with other facial features, but this is the one that stuck out to me last night.
And just for the record, I’ve been classified as a super-recognizer (facial recognition) as well as possibly having mirror-touch synethesia, which is basically empathy gone amok. I can tell what other people are feeling because I take on their emotions as my own. This has been the case since I was very young. I’ve already done some testing via Dartmouth and they would like me to follow up with more tests from Harvard’s lab. I am confident that I also read microexpressions and other body language extremely well, but I think it’s more subconscious. I pick up on emotions and I am always right, but I may do it differently than you do it or maybe not. I don’t know yet. I’m still learning about it. I always thought I was crazy or that my ability to empathize was just me being “oversensitive” but I also kind of knew it was more than that. Anyway, sorry for the ramble. I tend to do that once I get talking about this stuff! Lol!