Issue No. 63

I believe one of my talents since childhood has been the speed with which my eyes move from one spot to another, often without anyone noticing. I even utilize my peripheral vision as my primary focus, blurring out what's in front of me so I can concentrate on what's happening beside or even behind me. I taught myself this skill. Over the years, I've learned that this ability enables me to observe how people react.

For example, if I offer someone a chocolate, do their eyes light up? If they do, it indicates they like it; if not, they might pretend to. I've also learned to detect lies. Do they quickly shift their eyes left and right? Or do they maintain direct eye contact? If it's the former, there's a strong chance they're lying. This observational skill extends beyond visual cues; it's evolved to include auditory cues. I can tell if someone is lying by the slight increase in pitch at the start of their sentence. They may not realize it, but in the first half-second, their voice is higher, then they become conscious and lower it. Of course, this talent isn't just for detecting lies but also for understanding people's personalities. For instance, I know a guy who can't sit still and is always moving around when we're talking. It's because he's intellectually active; his mind is juggling multiple thoughts simultaneously. In college, there was a girl who would glance sideways at her friend whenever she talked about herself, seeking her friend's approval before saying anything that might strain their friendship.

As children, we use our eyes as a primary tool for communication. For instance, little girls often use eye contact to seek their parents' approval more frequently than boys do. Boys' brains aren't wired the same way.

A study conducted by Dr. Eleanor Maccoby and Dr. Carol Jacklin in 1974 explored gender differences in parent-child interactions, focusing on how parents responded differently to their daughters and sons. One aspect of the study observed that girls tended to use more eye contact with their parents to seek approval or assess the safety of a situation compared to boys.

This finding suggests that from a young age, girls may rely more on seeking parental reassurance through non-verbal cues like eye contact, while boys might be more inclined to take risks without seeking as much parental approval. This is why there's a perception that boys are riskier and less interested in relationships as kids. This isn't an ideology pushed onto kids; it's how their brains are biologically wired. Multiple studies have confirmed this.

As these boys and girls grew older, the differences became more striking. Girls are more receptive to their peers' reactions, while boys aren’t as much. Boys tend to focus more on the materialistic part of the world, while girls are focused on relationships. Provide a huge sample data and these minute differences evolve into much bigger, much more definitive differences, which include the type of jobs they are more interested in and more fitting to. For example, since we've established women are more interested in relationships, they tend to be more receptive to the needs of others, so they are better caretakers, teachers, and counselors. Men, on the other hand, don’t have the same patience and attention span, so they become more interested in more active experiences such as physically demanding jobs, engineering, and leadership, where competition is much more emphasized.

As a young man at that time, you can imagine having such observational skills was extremely unusual. I even considered it a curse because I couldn't stop observing people. Sometimes, I'd sit in a hallway just observing people and their interactions, feeling like I was in a different dimension, merely observing those around me. Then my thoughts evolved. I wondered, could I observe myself while observing? What am I doing while observing? What am I not seeing while I observe? I knew it was like a snake biting its own tail—infinitely circular. My mind has been pondering these questions ever since.

Since then, my personal task has been to observe others and myself. Eventually, I learned to use it as a tool. I often find amusement in looking at people's mistakes because some of them are so easy to see, yet they don't notice. I sometimes think it's some form of authority complex on my part, but you can't blame me; some people are just plain oblivious. For example, when I was learning to drive, I didn't even know the purpose of the left lane. But during my first test on the highway, I quickly realized it. The cars in the left lane were going much faster, even 20% faster than the speed limit in other lanes. There had to be a reason for that, so I observed the cars in the left lane. After passing three slower vehicles, they would move to the second lane. I witnessed it four times. My mind concluded that this lane must be for passing and not simply for speeding up. Nobody taught me that; I just observed.

Don’t get me wrong; I still make small mistakes on the road, and I'm constantly learning. But this proves that using your eyes to observe people can go a long way in learning and gaining wisdom. Some people will call it common sense but as we have learned, common sense is not so common.

You can actually use your eyes to prevent mistakes before they even happen. In my case, most people in my neighborhood, where I grew up, didn't attend or finish college. I knew that was a mistake because they perpetuated the same lifestyle to their children. The same poverty that had affected them still plagued their descendants. I knew I had to change my environment. When I did, I saw a change in my life. I didn't have to experience their situation to learn from it; I could imagine what it would be like. I used my eyes and imagination.

So, if you want to gain wisdom quickly, observe how people make mistakes. Just observe as if your life depended on it. You'll see that humanity is full of people who don't know what they're doing. We're all children in a bigger pen, constantly learning. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes; I'm not saying it's wrong. I just want you to see how you can take advantage of those mistakes without having to experience them.

Right now, I see some of my friends in Korea going through a lonely phase, using traveling or hanging out as a distraction from the life they want. Yet, trip after trip, their problems remain the same. Traveling won't fix your life. Addressing your problems will fix your life. Traveling is just one of the potential sparks that can ignite change, but it's not required. I often wonder why these people distract themselves with the vanities of the world when they know their happiness doesn't lie in them. I wonder.

Then I realized humans literally have blind spots. We can't see everything. It's the same problem I faced when I couldn't find a real way to observe myself observing. It's like a snake biting its own tail. We can only do so much. There are things we can never know we are doing, and that's a tragedy. The best we can do is make use of what we have and strive to do better every single day.

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Until next week,