Why I Couldn't Look You In The Eye

On finally learning our eyes are bridges to deeper connection

I’ve spent my entire life avoiding eye contact. When speaking with people, my gaze always drifted to their mouths. I thought it was the poet in me, drawn to the way words danced into the world. It was a beautiful theory, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

To give you an idea of how little eye contact I made—I’m forty-nine years old, close to my father, and only this month realized that his eyes are blue. If someone had asked me about their color, I would have guessed brown. The same is true for almost everyone I have ever dated. Can you imagine?

What’s true is I didn’t even know the extent of this avoidance. A couple weeks ago, it all came to the surface during a breathwork session with a friend. She paused mid-sentence and looked me directly in the eye without speaking a word. To say I was unnerved is an understatement. My body didn’t feel equipped to handle the intensity of the vulnerability. I wanted a mask. I wanted armor. I wanted to hide in a dark hole where the truth of me could not be seen. She kept holding my gaze.

As we sat there, I heard the words of Michael Singer: “If you really want to see why you do things, then don't do them and see what happens.” Even though every cell of my being was urging me to become a mason, to erect a protective wall between us, I did not turn away. For fifteen minutes I did not turn away. I wanted to see why I didn’t look. And as I refused to turn away, refused to wear a mask, every reason I had ever avoided people’s gaze surfaced: fear.

Memories emerged. As a teen with braces and acne, I feared looking into someone’s eyes and seeing them see the “imperfection” of my face. As I grew older and battled Lyme disease, I couldn’t bear the thought of others thinking, “My God, Andrea looks terribly sick.” As I began to age, I was afraid to see others assessing me with the thought, “Wow, Andrea really didn’t age well.” When I got cancer, when I was bald and had so few red blood cells that I was basically translucent, it was the first time in my life I felt truly beautiful. But even then, I was somehow still in the habit of turning away my gaze, not wanting to witness the raw concern that swelled in people’s eyes. That’s to say that even in these last years, I still had closed curtains on the windows to my soul.

But on a much deeper level, far beyond my insecurities in relation to my physical form, I saw that avoiding eye contact had been a lifelong defense mechanism—my ego’s way of protecting me from the vulnerability of being truly seen. But in avoiding what I thought would be judgment, what I was really missing out on was connection.

As my friend and I continued our staring-match, I began to feel intensely connected. And that feeling led to an unexpected peace. Because I wasn’t just looking at her—I was making eye contact with all of existence. It felt like leaving the world of separation and entering a world of gorgeous oneness.

Since that day, I’ve felt a permeating peace when making eye contact with anyone. I’ve come to know the healing power in people’s eyes and have no doubt that connection is medicine. The day after that experience, when Meg and I found ourselves beginning to argue, I asked her to simply sit and look into my eyes for five minutes. What once would have spiraled into more tension became a moment of true understanding. We discovered we didn’t have to say a word. Beyond anger, beyond assumptions, we began to seal our love in that place of still presence.

The next evening, I took my 13-year-old dog, Squash, to the vet—an event that has always terrified her. Typically, Squash shakes with fear throughout the appointment, completely incapable of being soothed. But when the vet walked into the room, I instantly made eye contact and kept eye contact with the vet so intently that I found my whole nervous system go quiet. As I held Squash in my arms, she, for the first time in vet history, stopped shaking too. I could hardly believe it. Was it my fear that my sweet dog was fearing all along?

After these transcendent experiences, I did something I can’t believe I’ve never done. I spent ten minutes gazing into my own eyes in the mirror. If you’ve never done this, do it. It felt like a reunion with my oldest friend. I couldn’t believe that I had never truly seen the color of my own eyes. I would have described them as brown, but they are instead a kaleidoscope of colors: shades of russet and cider and coffee and wood. But it was so much more than color. When I wasn’t inspecting my face with shame or pride, but looking into the eyes of my old friend, I saw who I was beyond form. I saw my eternal self.

As our country is more divided than ever, I find myself thinking about eye contact and asking: What if, while speaking with family members who share very different political beliefs, we looked into each other’s eyes? What if, in the heat of political disagreement, we first spoke without our voices? What if we allowed the simple, silent act of looking into one another’s gaze to begin bridging the distance between us? And then to speak from that open, idea-less place?

Eye contact, I have come to understand, is the bridge of truth between humans, and between humans and the divine. The fear of being seen, the anxiety of judgment, the self-doubt—all of these fade away when we are fully present in the gaze of another. The more I look into people’s eyes, the more I find myself becoming who I truly am.

HEART EYES,
Andrea 🖤

Ps. Meg shared with me the gorgeous story of Marina Abramović’s performance piece at MoMA, titled The Artist Is Present. Marina sat silently at a table for over 700 hours, inviting museum visitors to sit across from her and make eye contact in a wildly vulnerable exchange. One of the most powerful moments happened when Marina’s ex-partner, Ulay, whom she had not seen for decades, sat across from her. The moment is one of the most moving moments of art I have ever seen.