The Way We Look At Strangers

Sitting in a chair in the back of the room, I heard those harmful words they were speaking of you. Their eyes followed your quiet steps as you made your way to wherever it was you were headed. Once I connected the dots that led my eyes to you, I realized you were just a stranger in their lives and in mine.

You didn’t know what they were saying about you. You didn’t even know they were looking at you. But I did. In the back of the room, I knew.

There they sat, discussing your tattoos, laughing at what you were wearing, expressing their disgust in you because of the subtle color of blue you had in your hair that you must’ve gotten for fun.

These women were measuring your value based on how you looked. You were not worthy to them. You shouldn’t have ruined your body or beauty with those ugly tattoos. You should have done a better job shopping for more expensive clothes because your outfit isn’t visually pleasing for others. You’re a freak because you have an unnatural color in your hair. You must be a bad person.

What these women didn’t know was that I was in the back of the room watching them watch you.

They had on bland, name-brand clothes, hair that resembled almost any other person in sight, and skin that seems to have been touched by nothing other than the hands of time. They look like the “perfect” human beings. They blend in so well—the way they want you to blend in also. They expect you to be perfect just like them. But I noticed that you were perfect as yourself already, and that they are the ones furthest from it.

As I sat and watched this play out in front of me, I realized the measurement of beauty and “perfectness” is how willing we are to let others live in their own skin and in their own lives without the urge to judge them based on what doesn’t look like ours. Maybe we should be giving each other a chance to say hello before we cast judgment onto someone who doesn’t even know we’re looking at them.

While these women chose to think poorly of you without even knowing you, I chose to admire you. I chose to admire you in hopes that, if you felt the pressure of their dreadful stares, maybe my smile of admiration would redirect your attention to me. That maybe my friendly and kind gesture would mask the misery these women brought into existence.

You’re just a stranger, so why would I even take the time to analyze the situation like this?

Because sometimes I’m the stranger. And I hope that there is someone sitting in the back of the room watching them watch me, hoping I see their smile of admiration instead of those dreadful stares.