Unseen Unseens
Our saccadic eye movements keep us safe by roving quickly, detecting threats and opportunities too fast for our slow processing. In these instants, information from our eyes bypasses the slower pathway to the visual cortex (where we actually think about what we’re seeing) and instead speeds directly to the Hypothalamus. For quick action. So fastballs can be caught, dodgeballs ducked, toddlers restrained, and cars controlled.
Our social saccades allow us to survive and thrive in fast-paced social environments. However, because they tend to lie outside our awareness, these rapid eye movements can also get in our way, occluding certain information and preoccupying us with the obvious and superficial. While helping us gain our bearings, these sudden eye actions sometimes speed us in the wrong direction. All of a sudden, in snap vision, we can find ourselves looking away when we don’t mean to, or looking too long, or not looking at all – on the basis of incomplete information or faulty assumptions.
Think of a time when you looked before looking – when you inadvertently did what you hadn’t intended to with your eyes, and created a problem for yourself. There are big consequences to these sorts of blindspots, generally seen only in hindsight.
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Mindfulness of our negative visual habits can be useful in lots of social situations. Particularly when we feel uncomfortable – stressed, angry, hungry, frustrated, nervous, confused – our REMs can educate us. Acting as signposts (look here!), our unplanned reactions reveal flashes of inner motivations, emotions and judgments of others not otherwise visible. Suddenly, under duress, our true colors show: hidden prejudices, deniedanger, concealed envy, desires for revenge – in our plain sight.
My clients bring their eye awareness to bear in traffic tie-ups, business functions, crowded planes and family dinner tables. They use them to spot ‘danger’ situations when they are apt to fall into negative saccadic routines, recognizing primitive reaction patterns that surface in times of tension. In this way, they can anticipate when, where, and with whom they are likely to use their eyes in ways that are unwise — and avoid careless expressions of disrespect, dismissal, and hostility.
What they come to realize in these instants is that their eyes not only take in information and communicate non-verbally, but they also act as transmitters of attention, or powers of intention. While invisible to the naked eye, experiences of ‘eye energy’ with others are actually very common. Often resulting in strong emotions, our positive eye exchanges can be amplified and passed on to others – just as the negative may ripple away from us to infect and inflict pain. This transmission capacity is important in light of recent research on positive social contagions. The healthful consequences of friendship networks involve viral connections that move between people. Succinctly, how we look has an impact that echoes back to us.
This kind of insight that offers real split-second options: To respond rather than react, to be thoughtful not thoughtless, to walk our talks even when it’s not easy, and (paraphrasing) actually become the change we want to see in the world.