The gaze creates spaces for relationships. When we gaze, our “I” moves toward what we are looking at; beyond its refuge, it opens to new forms of encounter, and it is ready to receive, which is a way of welcoming the giver. When we gaze, we undertake a “journey” from the innermost part of our being to “place” it in our pupils, in our gaze. Therefore, the gaze is seen and decoded by what it reveals: the personal being, the inner world. If it welcomes, understands, respects, and attends, the one who looks reveals themselves. By revealing themselves, the gaze becomes dialogic. Dialogue is an inherent ingredient of human relationships. Human beings are open, capable of opening themselves to reality, by virtue of which their gaze does not reflect; it communicates their experience, which, as their own, is original. But when they meet the gaze of the “other,” they exchange originalities in relation to the same good: reality.

The gaze, besides revealing one’s inner self, is a gentle breeze that discovers and values ​​the treasures of a you: “Do not despise me, for if you found a dark complexion in me, you can now look at me, after looking at me, what grace and beauty you left in me.” (Saint John of the Cross). However, there are tender gazes, cold gazes, cruel gazes; humble gazes, haughty gazes, pure gazes, grim gazes, penetrating gazes, and superficial gazes. Knowing how to look into the eyes and read what gazes say is an art that enhances interpersonal relationships.

The most beautiful gazes are those that project the highest aspects of human beings: their intelligence, their will, and their uniqueness. They are those that convey understanding and love for other people and the universe. They are those lucid and loving gazes that say: “How good that you exist!” “What a joy to see you and have you!” It is the gaze that rules your being like this and not otherwise: “Take off your clothes, your mannerisms, your portraits; I don’t love you like this, disguised as someone else, always the daughter of something. I love you pure, free, irreducible: you.” It is the loving gaze capable of distinguishing, in a crowd, the beloved. “I know that when I call you among all the peoples of the world, only you will be you.” (Salinas) In short, it is the gaze of God, of a mother, and of a loving heart.

When the relationship is instrumentalized, the gaze doesn’t confirm; it reifies and reduces. The counterattack is to reaffirm freedom by nullifying one’s own, which is a way of reducing it and paying it back in kind. Conflict is present in the relationship. There are the most varied examples: think of marital relationships, where one reduces the wife, the one who washes, irons, takes care of the children, and handles micro-decisions; And, father, he is subtracted from the one who brings in the money, solves the big problems, and makes the macro decisions. So, if any of them wants to give their opinion on something “that isn’t their concern,” they are reproached for their interference. In both cases, the person is replaceable. I can replace one worker with another; a wife who washes, irons, and cooks with a professional laundress and cook; and a husband with one who provides more and manages better.

Ultimately, what exists is a hypertrophy of the self that cannot establish any relationship without feeling intimidated, and the only way to overcome the threat is to reduce the “you” into a reflection of the self. Those who don’t agree with him are wrong; those who agree with him are right in what they agree with and wrong in what they disagree with; and those who share the same opinion do nothing but repeat it; they are mere graceless epigones, lifeless echoes of third-party ideas.

Ultimately, the eyes are the window to the soul, says popular wisdom; physics counters, “only if the window is clean”; even philosophy insists: “the luminosity of the soul clears the fog from the glass,” but only love discerns the brilliance of the eyes.