Lately, I have been trying this out:
Make eye-contact with fellow exercise-goers and smile at them.
Why?
It seems that we are always trying to avoid acknowledging other people's presence, even though they can be right in front of us or so near us.
Why?
Are we afraid?
Do we want to protect our personal space (much needed especially in an over-crowded city?).
I was trying to challenge my comfort zone through everyday small acts, when I decided this could be a project or habit that could potentially help me with expanding my comfort zone. I am in nature, not sociable person. While I do enjoy warm human interactions, I rarely do so comfortably with people I do not know well or not sure of, let alone strangers...
But I do feel a surge of warmth (with my face quietly beaming up) whenever a fellow stranger park-goer or exerciser initiates a "Good morning!" cheerfully or simply greets me with a smile. It is not so scary after all. In fact, it lights up our lives as beings living together in this fragile world.
So I decided to try this Project Smile - to initiate eye contact, smiles and greetings, when I meet fellow runners, hikers, exercise-goers or photographers when I am out running or hiking.
These are the results in general, after the project has been ongoing for a few months:
- It is easier for me to initiate the smiles when the incoming fellow being is friendly in nature, ready to offer a return or being an initiator him or herself. I may even reply or initiate verbal greeting.
- It took me some overcoming of effort to do so when I already see that the oncoming being wears an expressionless face, trying to shun eye contact, or us struggling with his/ her workout, or when it is more than one pax, engaged fully in their interactions
- I realised that I don't even want to or remember to do this initiation when I am struggling, panting in my workout myself, or feeling too tired or weary.
- I effortlessly continue a succession of verbal greetings when I already garnered a wave of positivity in the earlier experiences of my workout.
- There are people who are reserved and shy, but when greeted by me, they will break out in smiles as well, or a verbal exchange.
- There are people who remain aloof in or some nodded back without expression.
- There are some who would totally shun eye contact with me.
- When I myself do not wish to greet anyone but don't want to appear aloof and rude, I will just wear a light smile on my face to indicate that I am harmless and friendly. I may or may not look them in the eye as I passes them by... I do understand that feeling when I want to be undisturbed, and wished to be left alone during those "emo" days.
