In the Eyes of Another

The book I am reading right now deals with brains. More specifically, it seeks to illuminate the neuroscience of everyday life – of how the things we think and feel result from the workings of different parts of the brain.

One of the things covered in the book is our innate ability as humans to “read minds”. This isn’t mind-reading in the traditional sense; it alludes to our ability to understand what a person is thinking and feeling simply by looking at their eyes. Without even knowing how we do it, we can look into another’s eyes and know that they are feeling sad, or angry or regretful. It’s pretty remarkable if you think about it: we are wired to understand what others are thinking – it’s part of our evolutionary survival equipment.

I was with friends last Friday night outside of Buddakan, which is a pretty fancy bar/restaurant here in New York. As we walked up to the door, we all noticed that one of the patrons outside waiting for a taxi (or limo) was Anthony Kiedis. For those that don’t know, he is the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers--a world-famous band that has bent musical genres, and whose members have worn tube socks on their genitals.

At this point, I of course had a fleeting desire to offer up a throaty “Blood, Sugar, Baay-bay…” just to see if he would bounce back with “Sex Magik!!” -- but I would never give in to such an uncouth urge. I am not one to lionize, so I did what I always do when I see a celebrity. I pretend I don't see them. Then, like one of those paintings with the moving eyes from Scooby Doo, I look out of the corner of my eye at the last second as I am walking by them. Only this time, Kiedis was doing the exact same thing. Here we were, only feet away from one another, looking sideways at one another -- he in suspicion, me in feigned insouciance. As our eyes locked, though, I had a sense that he thought I was a stargazing moron, even though I totally am not. I didn’t know how I knew it. I just did.

Later in the weekend, I was walking on the very sunny side of the street on my way back home. About 100 yards down the sidewalk, an Asian-American toddler was standing, wearing the number 4 jersey of Green Bay Packer quarterback Brett Favre. She was outside of a hotel with her mother, I heard her yell something to me. It became louder as I approached. "Hi!!" "Hi!! Hi!!". She waved vigorously, as if a response from me would quell a pain in her that she had for years. I waved back and said "Hi!". She looked me in the eye, and then grabbed the front of her jersey and crumpled it in a cute, happy-little-girl-in-NFL-apparel kind of way. When our eyes met, I got the sense that she thought I was tall, that she liked ice cream, but that she wasn’t particularly fond of Brett Favre. Now this goes beyond just intuition, since it actually runs counter to logic. She was wearing his jersey, after all. But some part of me knew that she didn’t care at all about him, at least not in the way she cared about ice cream. All of this came to me in a split second, from underneath any conscious thoughts on the subject.

I wonder now about my mind-reading abilities, and whether they are beyond those of other humans. It’s possible I have a sixth sense – possible, but not likely. I think we all have the ability to see things others can’t. I just happen to be able to see inside the minds of rock icons and toddlers and see what’s buried there– things like coolness and contempt, misgivings and ice cream.