How Now Brown Brow

I know someone who devotes her life to improving that life. She devours every course and book on self-improvement, self-assessment and self-recovery she can find. The problem is she has been so busy planning her voyage of self-discovery, she has never actually embarked on it.

Nevertheless, earlier this week, with a little time on my hands, I decided to try something similar, though with less conviction and with more modest goals. I began with addressing the big questions of the Universe—questions of Life and purpose; questions that in many cases had led to wars and, less often, had halted them; questions that had taxed, indeed plagued, greater minds than mine, questions such as: why do we have eye-brows?

Well, let me say at the outset that nothing else in our lives, short of the existence of my wife or if you live in Canterbury Robbie Deans, epitomises a Higher Being at work than eye-brows. They are a miracle of nature, an extraordinary evolutionary retainment after much else has been expelled. And for good reason; those tufts of hair, it has been ordained, serve great purpose and have therefore been retained. Eyebrows, it seems, are there to help keep moisture out of our eyes when we sweat or walk around in the rain. The arch shape diverts the rain or sweat to the sides of our face, keeping our eyes relatively dry. The most obvious advantage of this is that it lets us see clearly when we're sweating a lot or out in the rain. Without eyebrows, getting around in these conditions is a little more difficult. The shape of your brow itself diverts a certain amount of moisture, but eyebrows make a significant difference in your ability to see. Diverting the sweat away is also good because the salt in sweat irritates the eyes, making them sting a little. That at least is what sweaty-scientists tell us.

Of course the arching of eyebrows is also a very significant sign of disapproval or questioning. And this is used to frightening effect by our present prime minister and more recently by John Key, though the latter has not yet mastered the technique. Of some interest also is that the World’s most famous Italian widow, Mona Lisa, had no eye-brows; Lisa Presley, conversely, has them to excess.

There you go: in a short few words I have succeeded in enriching your life and without a book or course in sight. Say thank you Fryday.