Since my girlfriend lives in a different city I travel by train a lot. Normaly I use this time to do some reading but today I forgot to bring my book so I was forced to just listen to music and stare out the window. Unfortunately a mother with two children sat down in front of me and we were kinda forced to stare at each other.
I cannot empathize enough the almost cruel nature of the emotion of shame. Shame is an artificial emotion created by the world we live in to stop us of doing things which are considered inproper. It gives us an unpleasant feeling if we still do those things. That is why it is unconfortable to sit in front of strangers and wanting to look at them, but definitely not if they are looking back. Resulting in an unconforable looking away of both sides. A ridiculus situation because both people want to look but they can’t, because of this shame.
And it can be so much nicer! When I entered the platform today there was a girl sitting alone on a bench waiting for the train. Since there was nothing interesting to look at at this particular platform my eyes were forced to her, and she was looking back. Because she did not look away I felt kind of forced not to look away too. Funny how another form of shame can undo the first one. And it is so much nicer to just look a person in the eye, observe her and exchange a smile than to be forced to look away and feel releaved when you’ve passed her.
Anyhow, what I wanted to say is that young children can be very cute, and when I looked the youngest child in the train in the eye I sincerly thought: "Damn, you’re ugly…"