"The eye-to-eye contact is integral to the social engagement system, as is touch. The physiological exchange, in which we are participating in each other's nervous systems, leads to stabilization and relief."
I've been running experiments on how long I can maintain contact before I cut and run. As someone given, by nature, to cutting and running, I can't say it has been easy. So when I read the above quote in Peter Levine's "In an Unspoken Voice", I (understandably) thought it was aimed specifically at me. I love these little moments of synchronicity, where the world outside seems to mirror and even respond to whatever is occupying your mind so precisely, it leaves you for a moment or two speechless.
It's an uneasy, and at times downright dangerous thing, holding a stranger's eye, particularly for a woman, which is why we tend to avoid it. In my observations about the world (at least), men tend to engage in more risky play, even when it comes to eye, and I see older men reach for mine, and ask myself if it's loneliness or reflex. Men, on general, like to play, will hold your gaze a second or two longer than they should, tempting fate, or perhaps reassuring themselves.
And me, I find there's an immense difference between letting them hold my gaze, and actively participating in it. It's one of my intentions for the year to be less passive. I'm trying to engage more with the world around me. I hold the gaze of lonely old people, single mothers sitting on the bench outside, sinking into invisibility. I hold, on occasion, the gaze of a harmless drunk. Younger men, I tend to engage less, and when I do, I admit I try to modulate my intention more. To declaw myself purposefully and let on by every involuntary twinge that I am not looking for provocation.
I am merely saying hello.
Even before reading the above, I understood inside myself how important it is, how valuable, to look people in the eye. Romania isn't a particularly friendly country in that regard, though I'm guessing, still, we're miles ahead from even colder peoples.
When I'm out, I actively fight the neurotic, antisocial urge to keep my eyes down, or hanging aimlessly above others' heads. I'm consumed by the music I listen to, the life I am living, the places I now must get to.
Yet still, I can afford to stop my meandering and say hello.
While on the surface benevolent, it is (at core) a selfish experiment. You learn so much from the way people look (or refuse to look) at you. The way old women stare reproachfully. The kindle of kindness inside old men's gaze, and then, perhaps if held too long, a lingering of more? Still? The retreat of knocking on doors. A sense of being pulled back to life.
Come to think of it, I'm only ever aggressive to people I suspect of ill-intent. In the words of my beloved Lemmy, "they're always hungry, look 'em in the eye". It's also a recent development that I've started looking at the world with "come at me, you motherfucker" eyes, when needs be. For so long, I made myself unobtrusive, harmless, as though that were something to aim towards.
But most eyes, I smile at. I try to meet them on a level, to establish however fleeting a connection, to say I am not lost in my own things for now. I see you there, as you are, the way you wore your good shirt today, or are particularly pleased by the way your hair hangs.
So many of us are geared towards confrontation. Women are often squaring up (against other women - haven't we had enough of this rot?). Men are more preyful than playful, often, which is its own aggression. Elders are judgmental and putting you down.
It's uneasy, as I say. It forces you to meet head-first a slew of emotion, to experience (no matter how briefly) the intensity of other people's realities, which we tend to shy away from, and be unprepared for. Most of us are so willfully consumed by our own dramas, we have little time for others'.
And yet, what if holding somebody's gaze could reassure them against an ocean of loneliness and fear? What if something as simple as keeping your eyes open and off the ground could, in someone's reality, be described as "healing"?
There's a lot of talk, in my world, at least, about nervous system awareness, regulation, etc., but we seem to assume it's a one-man job. Except, few things are in life, and who's to say something so daunting and complex could or should ever be entrusted to just one person?
Maybe we all gotta put in the work.