Eye Contact

So I was talking with one of my friends about the difference between guys and girls and how they interact. It had something to do with eye contact and how we position ourselves and random things like that. I don’t really remember the specifics about it, but it serves as a good intro to my blog about eye contact.

Eye contact is a funny thing. If you happen to find yourself in a pack of gorillas, (or is it a herd? a posse?) then you would want to avoid making eye contact with any gorillas, especially the alpha male. You’ll get yourself a good pummeling if you do. So we as fellow members of the primate group seem to have a natural aversion to eye contact as well. This kind of a subject came up in a conversation with a girl I met last week. Ironically, at first I found it difficult to keep decent eye contact with this girl at first. She was attractive and had very striking eyes. So for some reason there was something that made me not want to keep eye contact for very long. I got over it after a little while though.

So in our conversation we were talking about how we had been making efforts to be friendlier on campus. I personally have been making efforts to talk to people when I’m walking on campus. She had been making efforts to try to smile at more people. I found that it’s hard to actually find people that are available to talk to. They are either on cell phones, listening to their ipod, or in groups. She found that it’s hard to simply make eye contact with people to smile at them.

So this brings me to stake conference over the weekend. I’m sure many of you have found yourself on the stage at church or in some position in front of a group of people. Well there are two situations that you can run into. Sometimes you’ll find someone out there that just catches your eye. And your gaze on the crowd will end up reverting to that person. Other times someone will be right in the default range of your gaze. So you will end up looking at them often with out realizing it. It is quite funny when you are on the receiving end of the person on the stand. Well over the weekend in the two sessions of conference I found my self on the receiving end of one of those situations. It was the first counselor in of the stake relief society presidency. On both Saturday and Sunday we kept making those awkward glances at each other. So on Sunday I started making a game out of it. I decided to see how long I could hold eye contact and see who would break eye contact first. I think the record was about 8-10 seconds before she broke eye contact. That is actually an eternity when you are staring a stranger in the eyes. It’s amazing how many times in 8 seconds you will have the urge to look away. Needless to say, it was a funny game, and who ever that was probably thinks I’m really creepy. But it’s all in fun! And in my defense I would only keep the eye contact when she was looking at me first. I didn’t initiate it, she did. I just held it.