If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us can probably think of something we are doing, or declining to do (or supporting, or buying into) that is likely to strike people of the future as an obvious example of a moral failure. Human choices are sometimes badly at odds with human ideals and, in many cases, that seems to become clearer to everyone in the rearview mirror.

I got a fresh reminder of this while recently watching the PBS documentary series The American Revolution (2025). If you know anything about that revolution, it’s hard to miss the disconnect between its lauded ideals – including the assertion, in the Declaration of Independence, that ‘all men are created equal’ – and the slavery upheld by many of the nation’s founders.

The documentary also highlights a less-known detail about the Declaration. In a draft of the colonies’ complaints against the British crown, Thomas Jefferson, himself an ‘owner’ of people, blamed the king for the Atlantic slave trade and, incongruously, called it a ‘cruel war against human nature itself’.

What’s stuck with me in particular is the way the historian Annette Gordon-Reed then sums up Jefferson’s relationship to slavery. ‘From the beginning to the end, this institution bounded his life, even though he knew it was wrong,’ she says. ‘How could you know something is wrong and still do it? Well, that is the human question for all of us.’

For me, her remark is an invitation to reflect. Hopefully, for most of us, our current behaviours don’t include anything that will be as terrible to our descendants as enslavement is to us. But the excuses we might give for acting or not acting now are likely to seem much thinner to someone living 250 years from now. And that, I think, casts a brighter light on our choices.

For most of my life I was not, I don’t think, a very facially expressive person. I’m ethnically Korean, and we tend not to move our faces too much (partly because it’s just the norm, along with a shared cultural concern that it encourages wrinkles). Even when telling a dramatic story, big expressions never felt natural to me, the way they seemed to be for others, and I’d wonder whether the restraint on my face was limiting my ability to connect with people.

It’s not an absurd idea. Research from 2024 concluded that being facially expressive is socially advantageous, suggesting it might lead others to like you more and see you as more agreeable. Another study found that expressiveness predicted how attractive people seemed to others.

My relationship to facial expressiveness started to change about three years ago, when I started learning American Sign Language. ASL is a language of the body. Individual signs provide a vocabulary, but much of the grammar and descriptive nuance comes from how you move your body and face. Suddenly, my stiff and muted facial expressions became a fluency issue, getting in the way of my legibility as a signer.

Signing ‘I like’, for example, communicates something far different when you do it with bright eyes and strong movements compared with signing it with a shrug and noncommittal expression. I’ve learned to make these distinctions clear across my face.

Over time, I’ve noticed a difference – I am more expressive now with everyone, not just when I’m signing. This, in turn, has made me feel more outgoing in conversation. I have a hunch that people now perceive me as friendlier.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling tired or shy, I’ll notice myself under-expressing, slipping back into my old ways. In those moments I remind myself that showing your feelings on your face is rewarding, and a way to invite greater understanding.