Eye contact

I pulled up to Starbucks today, my favorite caffienation stand and sat in a parking spot facing the window of Quizno's next door. A woman in her 30's sat in the window slowly eating a sub and watching me talk on the phone. At the same time a younger girl and I'm assuming her boyfriend sat in the window of Starbucks also watching. Everytime I would look up to and notice them looking they would immediately look away... why? Why not look back?

I talked to a new friend of mine who also is a professional dancer. She hails from good old North Carolina but took a job in Chicago for a year with a great dance company. She was sharing how most folks in Chi-town are very cold. How people would run into her on the street and never say "excuse me" how people wouldn't speak on the subway. The few rare times that people did speak to her they ended up propositioning her for sex. What is it with people? What's wrong with eye contact?

Remember the old days... when people talked? I know it sounds silly but it used to happen. People who talked and made eye contact weren't considered suspect of some ulterior motive, they were considered kind. People would stop to help a neighbor in need instead of passing by and saying, "I'm sure someone is already coming to help." Somehow our society has grown cold and distant from each other. Why? Come on you see it too don't you? You try to make eye contact and "they" look away. You're watching someone else and they look at you then you look away. Come on we all do it. Here's what I think. I think that making eye contact creates a responsibility people feel. It might go like this... if I make eye contact then I am somehow responsible to respond, to smile, to say hello. Then what? What if they think we're "weird" or something. What if they do?

Here's my challenge to myself and to all of you. When you make contact visually or if someone makes contact with you, look right back. Smile and say hi. Maybe every glance that we hide from is a missed opportunity to share love with the unloved or truth with the misguided. Maybe every eye to eye connection that we turn away from is an on ramp to relationship and to being able to be like Christ.

What are we hiding from, being ourselves? Surely everyone can't think we're "weird". What if we operated on the premise that everyone who looks at us wants to know us, what if they do? How will people know who we are if we are too shy to even return a glance and a smile. People will know us by our love... love is a language... let's speak it.