What color are your best friend’s eyes? Are you sure? What about your spouse? Your boss? The colleague who works down the hall? If you’re trying to recall someone’s eye color, an educated guess would be brown since they make up the largest percentage. Hazel, blue, green, grey and amber round out the numbers.
We often say it is someone’s eyes that jump out at us when we first meet them. In fact, more than 70% of us believe it is the eyes we notice first. It turns out there are actually other features that stand out as much, if not more, including how we interpret face shape, but there is just something about the eyes that are so compelling. But we have a problem. We aren’t noticing them the way we think we are. Or at least the way we used to.
Of course the changes to our interactions over the last months means we aren’t seeing each other to the same extent, but our decreasing ability to describe someone’s eyes goes way back. Years prior to the pandemic. We aren’t noticing each other in the same way we once did because we are no longer spending time looking each other in the eye.
Whether it’s Shakespeare, Cicero, or a slew of poets and musicians, we are often told the eyes are the window to the soul. If we want to get to the heart of a matter, we would do well, we are told, to look someone in the eye since that is where we will see what the words might not tell us. But here’s the thing: we aren’t looking into each other’s eyes the way we need to because we are so distracted by what’s going on around us.
When a child has something to say, too often parents are also trying to get a laundry list of activities done at the same time, meaning the conversation happens on the periphery of other things. There’s little chance to see the range of emotion displayed in the eyes and not heard in the words. The same goes for spouses or friends. Think of how often our phones interrupt those talks, resulting in more time being spent looking down at a screen instead of up into the eyes of those who should come first.
The other unfortunate outcome of our decreased time spent with other people (again, which was happening long before last winter) is that we aren’t having the conversations we need to be having face to face. Conversations about politics, religion, social issues or news events have moved out of the personal realm and become a digital blood sport that too many are playing. We’re not talking, we’re posting. We’ve removed discussion and replaced it with dismissing those who don’t agree. We’ve let discourse slip through our fingers and reduced it to what gets banged out on our phones. If you don’t agree, we try to take away your right to speak. We’re not seeing the people we’re hurting because we’re not looking each other in the eye and as a result it’s too easy to reject anyone and anything others say. The resulting discord, disharmony and disunity are damaging us.
When we connect eye-to-eye it’s more than words that are shared. It doesn’t mean we will agree on everything, but if we make the effort to stop and see the other person as we speak, maybe we will be more willing to hear and respect what is being said.
Shouting slogans across boulevards or pounding out harsh retorts on keypads does little to advance the conversation amongst anyone. But speaking person to person when there is opportunity to witness the earnestness behind the words, there is greater chance to learn from each other and move the dial on the dialogue. We won’t suddenly see eye-to-eye on everything, but the more important thing is that we get back to seeing each other’s eyes once again. That’s my outlook.
