It was fascinating to read my sister’s last post. I kept waiting for the punch line of the story where this stranger would directly comment on her eyes. What struck me, is that he never did. I assumed the man made these comments towards her because she had her head down and it was early. It never crossed my mind that he was making this comment because of her drooping eyes. I was amazed that she reached this conclusion about the interaction. I interpreted the exchange in a completely different light.
I can empathize with my sister’s experience. How do we differentiate between our own insecurities and what is actually happening around us? I too feel myself getting self conscious and defensive in public sometimes about my appearance, assuming people are making conclusion about me based on previous situations. All this is just in my head though! My past experience and my own insecurities have taught me to apply this lens of thinking to many social interactions. We won’t really ever know (perhaps without asking in the moment), but maybe this man just thought she was tired because her head was down. I am intrigued by what caused my sister to immediately jump to the conclusion that he made this comment because of her eyes.
It is funny to me because I am guilty of doing the same thing in jumping to conclusions. When looking at this from an outside perspective, however; it seems so obvious that maybe this wasn’t about eyes at all. Or maybe our past experience has been a wise teacher of intuition and it WAS in fact about her eyes. As long as we teach ourselves not to be bothered by these things, does it even matter?
BPESisters 