I go outside and look up at the stars in the winter night, imagining that the light is coming to me from millions, even billions of years ago. I think of myself, a speck on this piece of rock hurling through space, and I imagine someone 1000 years ago, looking up, convinced that they were looking up at a dome of heaven, and that the stars were entities traveling around us. I close my eyes and for a few minutes, my optic nerve keeps firing, so that there is a twinkling of stars shooting across the black velvet of my eyelids.
Our eyes receive light, our brains tell us the story. The muscles of our eyes allow us to widen and tighten our focus, to see the big picture and the details, from the general to the specific, from the background to the foreground. But it’s the brain that decides whether the person approaching me is a friend or foe, whether I am happy or disappointed that it is raining, whether I’m following the right star on the horizon.
Our brains make decisions about what we are seeing faster than our thinking minds can process. About five years ago, I was on a plane where a flight attendant spoke to a man in the aisle, “You’re a tall, strong, guy,” she said. “I’m going to need your help in a moment to lift something.” A few minutes later, someone came by and said, “Does anyone know where the tall guy went? What was he wearing?” “He went down there,” I answered. “He was wearing a plaid shirt.” When the man returned, I was shocked to see that his shirt was striped. Yet my mind had been confident as it constructed that picture in my head.
Our eyes influence our posture, our mood, even our wellbeing – strain in the eyes can cause headaches, neck and back pain. How does the quality of our seeing affect the way we see ourselves? How does my conditioning affect how I see another human? In these challenging times, it’s worthwhile to ask – am I seeing the whole picture or experiencing a narrow point of view?
Take a moment to watch this free video in which I demonstrate some of the eyes’ expressive capabilities. Enjoy!