Spring Break
Make eye contact, you jerk
James Malik
Issue date: 9/24/08 Section: Opinion
You're walking through campus at a little after 5 p.m. It's the early evening. Most people are finishing up classes, but there are still a few stragglers.
You see one of the few other people still walking through campus approaching, heading the opposite direction down the sidewalk. As he or she begins to pass, you attempt to make eye contact in order to greet them, to acknowledge their presence, to acknowledge that another human being is walking past you.
After all, how dissimilar can you really be from that person? You go to the same school, you are likely relatively close in age, you probably have some of the same concerns, both personal and societal, you have many of the same essential needs, the list goes on.
Instead, the stranger puts forth his or her best effort NOT to make eye contact, to NOT acknowledge you.
I'm sorry, but I personally have to have a good laugh at this. Who is so proud, so arrogant, so egotistical that they cannot acknowledge another human being? Not in the sense that they are not capable, but that they would somehow be defaming themselves if they were to do so.
Obviously you are not going to greet every single person that walks by you in the middle of the day when you may walk by a hundred people just going to or coming from class, but when you and the individual adjacent to you on your respective paths nearly constitute half the people around, ignoring the other is just ridiculous; not only ridiculous, but rude, ignorant, narrow-minded, (pick an adjective).
Also, some people may naturally be more reserved than others, but you can clearly tell the difference between someone avoiding eye contact and human interaction because they are shy and someone doing the same because of their ego. It's no big secret that you can often read more about a person from their actions and mannerisms than from their words. Even beyond that, you can almost hear the split second judgments going through people's minds. Who are we to judge anybody?
"Divide and conquer," or in most cases for this university's as well as most of the American population, divide and be conquered. There's no hiding that the challenges that this country and all others face are growing in number. There has been an unspoken tension as well as a manifested tension growing among our population. The mantra of "change" touted by presidential candidate Barack Obama is quickly uniting people from all walks of life. Now more than ever, as citizens of the United States, but more importantly as members of the great human race, we need to unite.
If we cannot even acknowledge our brothers and sisters in a safe public setting and continue to divide ourselves based on arbitrary factors and scales, what chance is there for uniting for the greater causes, once again being challenged?
You see one of the few other people still walking through campus approaching, heading the opposite direction down the sidewalk. As he or she begins to pass, you attempt to make eye contact in order to greet them, to acknowledge their presence, to acknowledge that another human being is walking past you.
After all, how dissimilar can you really be from that person? You go to the same school, you are likely relatively close in age, you probably have some of the same concerns, both personal and societal, you have many of the same essential needs, the list goes on.
Instead, the stranger puts forth his or her best effort NOT to make eye contact, to NOT acknowledge you.
I'm sorry, but I personally have to have a good laugh at this. Who is so proud, so arrogant, so egotistical that they cannot acknowledge another human being? Not in the sense that they are not capable, but that they would somehow be defaming themselves if they were to do so.
Obviously you are not going to greet every single person that walks by you in the middle of the day when you may walk by a hundred people just going to or coming from class, but when you and the individual adjacent to you on your respective paths nearly constitute half the people around, ignoring the other is just ridiculous; not only ridiculous, but rude, ignorant, narrow-minded, (pick an adjective).
Also, some people may naturally be more reserved than others, but you can clearly tell the difference between someone avoiding eye contact and human interaction because they are shy and someone doing the same because of their ego. It's no big secret that you can often read more about a person from their actions and mannerisms than from their words. Even beyond that, you can almost hear the split second judgments going through people's minds. Who are we to judge anybody?
"Divide and conquer," or in most cases for this university's as well as most of the American population, divide and be conquered. There's no hiding that the challenges that this country and all others face are growing in number. There has been an unspoken tension as well as a manifested tension growing among our population. The mantra of "change" touted by presidential candidate Barack Obama is quickly uniting people from all walks of life. Now more than ever, as citizens of the United States, but more importantly as members of the great human race, we need to unite.
If we cannot even acknowledge our brothers and sisters in a safe public setting and continue to divide ourselves based on arbitrary factors and scales, what chance is there for uniting for the greater causes, once again being challenged?
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Shy eyes
posted 9/26/08 @ 1:29 AM CST
I agree this is a situation that arises more frequently than it probably should, but I disagree that "you can clearly tell the difference between someone avoiding eye contact and human interaction because they are shy and someone doing the same because of their ego. (Continued…)
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