February 18 – Polite “Impoliteness”: At regular intervals (at least once per hour), stare at people who aren’t looking your way. Do so for at least two full minutes or until they glance your direction. When they do look your way (and they often will), smile at them gently for three (3) seconds before looking away. Bonus Activity: Obtain “blinders” (pieces of cardboard or plastic that completely block your peripheral vision) and wear them at regular intervals today.

Sight is the primary sense of our five “primary senses”. We use it more often and rely on it more intensely than any other means of gathering information – information we use primarily to make us feel safe. Indeed, we are programmed to crave security, which requires wanting to know how people in “other herds” (or other “tribes”) are living – and so we watch them.

We are programmed to crave intimate partnerships, which requires wanting to know how our friends and lovers are thinking about us – and so we watch them.

And we are programmed to feel powerful, which requires vicariously attaching our own sense of worth to our heroes – and so we watch them.

And yet I would submit that in all these cases, indeed in almost every moment of our lives, we aren’t actually SEEing others at all. Instead we are only “seeing” what we hope to see — “seeing” what we fear to see, or “seeing” what we desire to see. This doesn’t lend us any real clarity as to who the others in our lives truly are – only glimpsing vacuous and hazy outlines of their True Selves.

Ironically, it is this lack of Vision that causes us by far the most harm – that is by far the most “dangerous”; at the very least to our sense of well-Being & Happiness.

And yet, even though we very rarely activate it, we do possess a neocortex – the part of our brain that allows us to transcend self-centered instincts and actually SEE our surroundings in any given moment.

In order to engage this ability, we do need to pause and really look at our environment – we need to look with humility …

… we need to look with wonderment …

… and we need to look with gratitude.

Even when the other we see is different than we are – even if they are a “stranger” and even if they are an “enemy”, we can choose to set aside our beliefs and our emotions and simply SEE them.

And when we do so, something Wonder-full happens – the beings we choose to recognize in this unconditionally kind way respond to being SEEN. They awaken, even if just for a moment, to their own conscious lives … They “snap out of it” and remember, even if just for that instant, that they are alive and that they have a choice as to how they will BE in that moment. And in a world that is constantly encouraging us to sleep our way through life, this is a priceless gift indeed!

So go forth today and have fun waking folks up with your gentle stares – Have fun reminding them all that they too can be a powerful Force for Good in this life!

see You when I see you …

… and until then, Be Now!

Scaughdt

Filed under: 366 Days of Kindness by Scaughdt