“I see you” stayed in our minds after we watched Avatar. This greeting, inspired by Indigenous traditions, did not mean simply registering the presence of the person in front of you like an impersonal video camera. It meant looking at someone’s existence.
When we truly look at someone, our eyes remain on that person and seem to search: to know them, to understand the state they are in.
We all know how different it feels when somebody is really looking at us. It is as if the person watching you is gathering everything you have not yet said, but which is already there — on your face, in your eyes, in your posture, in your energy.
To look at somebody therefore requires presence.
And your presence comes with signals that the other person receives: a raised eyebrow, a smile, the position of your body, but most of all, the way you look at them.
We all learned during the pandemic that the mouth alone does not make a smile. In a genuine smile, the eyes smile too. We could recognise somebody smiling even when a mask physically covered their mouth.
We can recognise smiling eyes. We can feel warmth in somebody’s gaze. We see absent and empty eyes, cold eyes, curious eyes, eyes carrying intense emotion.
And many of these signals are translated directly by our nervous system, while the intellect often notices only the surface: light-coloured eyes, small eyes, large eyes, too much make-up around them.
Through our eyes, without words, we communicate love, hostility, warmth, indifference.
And the nervous system is constantly asking a much simpler question:
Am I safe with this person?
Or:
Am I not safe?
Once these signals reach the brain, we begin responding accordingly.
When we feel accepted, loved, admired — therefore safe — we naturally relax. We can smile wholeheartedly. Creativity appears more easily, and something closer to who we really are begins to reveal itself.
But when the nervous system detects I am not safe, the mind immediately starts searching for logical explanations and ways to adapt in order to restore safety.
We over-explain.
We analyse from every possible angle.
We search for solutions that might give us back some control.
These processes begin long before we are capable of understanding them intellectually.
In Edward Tronick’s famous Still-Face Experiment, we can see how quickly an infant reacts when the mother suddenly becomes completely emotionally unresponsive.
In less than two minutes, after the baby has tried everything available to reconnect with her, distress and panic begin to appear.
Although we are adults, the fundamental job of our nervous system has not changed: it is still trying to keep us safe.
And people who hold authority or emotional importance can matter enormously to that system — a parent, a teacher, a manager, and certainly an intimate partner.
A teacher can affect your future. A manager can dismiss you, threatening the resources on which your life depends. With a parent or partner, besides practical security, there is also a powerful emotional connection.
So before worrying that robots or other species might one day invade the world and wondering how we will communicate with them, perhaps we could start by really looking at one another in our ordinary human interactions.
Start at home.
Really look into your partner’s eyes.
Look at your child.
Not with one eye on the phone or television.
Not while speaking to them from another room.
Be there.
When your partner “no longer sees you,” the coldness and distance are not merely intellectual experiences. Social rejection activates some of the same neural systems involved in physical pain.
Yes.
Rejection can genuinely hurt.
And when, at work, your opinion, ideas and contribution seem to mean nothing — when you feel invisible — the experience of having your professional identity erased can hurt deeply too.
I want to make an important distinction here.
I am not talking about needing constant validation from others.
I am talking about the nervous system’s perception of safety in the presence of particular people.
Our older survival systems carry an enormous archive of information about what signals safety and what signals danger, and the still face is not exactly a signal that says: life is good here.
You do not become unsafe simply because your partner dislikes your green shirt, or because your manager tells you that you are capable of more and gives you additional tasks.
Disagreement supported by arguments is natural, healthy and often preferable.
Your existence is not being denied.
A point of view may simply be challenged.
But emotional blankness — what people jokingly call a “resting bitch face” when it becomes a constant interpersonal attitude — does not necessarily communicate peace to the nervous system.
Conflict is almost inevitable in human relationships. What matters is what both people do with it: whether it settles and creates greater clarity, or whether it escalates.
And yes, we communicate an extraordinary amount of information through facial micro-expressions — and through their absence.
Polite words cannot always cover what the face repeatedly communicates.
Because ultimately the nervous system is interested in survival, not in an elegant explanation for why you should continue feeling unsafe.
So before allowing your mind to create endless excuses and explanations while you walk on eggshells around people whose eyes are telling you everything they are unwilling to articulate because it would not sound politically correct, observe your body.
Then decide.
Your pet does not use words.
But when they look at you and somehow “tell” you that they missed you, you believe them.
Perhaps because, in that moment, your nervous systems are relaxed enough to communicate the same thing.
“The eyes are the mirror of the soul,” says an old proverb.
Perhaps what we are really describing is not simply the eyes themselves, but the way we are looked at — what we unconsciously recognise in another person’s gaze.
Some gazes stay with us for a lifetime.
I was fortunate enough to spend the first part of my life under my grandmother’s gentle gaze.
I grew up in a very small village, and I used to walk to kindergarten by myself. My grandmother would remain beside the gate of our house and watch me as I walked away.
I would keep turning my head to check whether she was still there.
She always was.
Her figure became smaller and smaller in the distance, almost a tiny dot, still waving whenever I looked back.
Then I would reach the corner where I had to turn right.
After one final wave from my grandmother, I would continue on my way feeling strong and loved.
It was as if that love came with me.
I kept that loving gesture of hers.
Today, when someone I love leaves, I watch them go.
And I wave.
And they feel my love remaining with them.