Eye Contact

By Donna Marie Todd

I was in Illinois to celebrate the holiday with my sister and left the suburb on an L train to visit the heart of the Windy City. I was hungry for a taste of big-city Christmas. The landscape changed from house with yard to condo with sidewalk to apartment with balcony to tenement with graffiti as we rose in and out of the subterranean railed landscape that moves workers from home to office and back in cities like Chicago across the world. 

The decorations were grand and gaudy; gaudy and grand as befits the city with the most skyscrapers in the world. (This according to my friend John who travelled there a lot.) I ate an $8 cookie called The Goddess at a pastry shop aptly named The Goddess and the Baker and washed it down with a lukewarm latte that was seriously overpriced. But I’m not complaining because it was a sweet gift from my beautiful niece who calls this city home. She knew her way around let me tell you.

She knows the lingo: Head high, shoulders back, rapid walk, own the space, fix eyes on distant points, never look into the face as it passes by. To gaze at another is to invite danger don’t you know. When I saw her stance, I remembered it from the cities I inhabited and found myself mirroring her moves. Returning to those caged-animal instincts that cities produce. And within me it rose again: The un-named, purse-clutching, breath-shortening, shoulder skimming, eye-avoiding fear of the other. 

This is no longer my world and I am glad of it. Thronged tightly with others, like cows pushed into a cattle car, we moved through the crowded Kris Kringle market no longer people but a herd. The city was so crowded we literally couldn’t move without matching the gait of the other: The one next to us, the one ahead of us, never really noticing who they were.

I, me, the woman called Donna Marie began an experiment. If I made eye contact then would others be present to me? Could we become more than passing bodies, could we be passing souls? One, two, twelve, thirteen before a glance was returned and the mouth of the other drew into a quick smile that mirrored mine.

We think we are creating safety with this lack of seeing. But a lack of seeing makes us, we ourselves, feel unimportant and unknown. Being seen is magical. Healing comes from being known and then safety arises.

“Stress! The silent killer!” the headlines declare. Do you know stress with a Capital S is exchanged hormonally by mammals in a herd, did you know that? It’s fascinating stuff, this modern science. Stress is responsible for heart disease and anxiety and high blood pressure and cancer and Lord only knows what else. And we are increasingly driven by a self-induced panic that causes us to race from one task to the next without ever seeing where we are going or looking into the eyes of the people next to us. We are cutting ourselves off from the very thing we need the most: each other.

So I propose a Christmas experiment; a controlled study of our humanity.  A test where we say, “Happy Holidays” with a smile and let our eyes look into theirs. If eyes are the windows to the soul, then our souls can only touch if we are bold enough to take the risk, to be the first one to exchange a glance. Then see if this simple act makes you feel more human, more connected, more loved, less stressed.

Happy Holidays! Here’s to hoping you take the chance!