An eye for an eye

The first time we met, I saw straight into your eyes for it was my habit. You looked straight back into mine and nodded.

My lessons in eye contact began as a child. My teachers, parents, and friends saw defiance burning in my brown depths. In my head, I was looking at them with the fierce innocence of a child who still didn’t understand the rules of right and wrong. You can naturally understand my confusion of being taught to maintain eye contact when speaking the truth versus constantly being told to look away. In my later years, people went on to label my gaze as intense. Frankly, I preferred that label over defiance.

I made my choice as a child to leave the interpretation of my gaze to the listener. In all my years of looking into people’s eyes, I’ve learned that people presume a number of things with the way you look at them. I’ve been told that I was easy to talk to, warm, genuine, friendly, open, and most important, that I really listened. Do we all make that mistake of thinking that people are paying attention if they are looking at us?

In all these years, I’ve met very few people who are able to look me in the eye while talking. Distractions, unwillingness to give away their soul’s secrets, inability to be honest with me, are only some of the excuses I make up for them.

But let me tell you, your eyes, your eyes looked straight into mine without any reservation. They looked at me with insatiable hunger to steal all the secrets of my soul which I thought I had kept carefully hidden. I can tell you now that at that moment, I understood the meaning of all the things my eyes meant – defiance, intensity, confidence, warmth. It was a moment of epiphany about what eyes reveal. I found a friend. I found my match.

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