When Eyes Meet

The autumn light was fading as I walked behind a row of apartment blocks. The air was cool and quiet, only the sound of my own footsteps. An older man approached from the other side with clothes worn, face tired, hair and beard unkempt. My first thought was: “Am I safe?” My body tightened. I quickened my pace and avoided eye-contact.

As he passed, something in me softened. The fear dissolved and a different thought surfaced: “Is he lonely? Is he okay? Does anyone care for him?” Moments later, two men appeared with a small dog, a couple, perhaps. I smiled, but they looked away. And then I wondered: “Do they feel unsafe with me? Do they think I might judge them?”

Two encounters, two small flashes of fear, each of us guarding ourselves, each longing for safety. It struck me how much of our fear lives in disconnection. We protect ourselves from others while keeping them at a distance, not realising that safety is born from the very thing we avoid: contact, presence, recognition. We relax when we feel seen. We feel safe when we know we belong and are accepted.

Looking at our recent elections, I sense the same pattern on a larger scale. The fear of losing a familiar world, of no longer recognising one’s own community, can easily turn into anger or exclusion. But underneath lies the same longing: to belong, to be understood, to feel safe in a changing world.

The world does not become safer through walls or hardened hearts. It becomes safer when we see that fear moves through all of us in different disguises, when we listen to understand rather than to agree and when we see that others are not that different from ourself. Safety is a shared space, like an embrace, given and received at the same time. This is the essence of Nonviolent Communication, and why I love it so much.

That evening walk reminded me how tender it is to be human, how easily fear can arise, and how quickly it can melt when our eyes meet. Perhaps safety begins right there, in a single moment of connection, on a quiet street, between two people who see that they are not so different after all.

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Warm regards,