Opportunities

Someone (hey, I keep wise company...) once told me that if you open yourself up to the world, the world opens itself to you.

How true.

Today, I decided to engage my world. I made sure that my stare and my gaze conveyed exactly what I meant - that I recognise the other as existing in my world and hence, offering an opportunity to interact with me.

It's only 10am, and I've made 2 new friends who have helped me with something so mundane yet could have been very difficult, and potentially one more. It seems that this rule is true:

Turkle's Law of Human Vulnerability to An Active Gaze

If a creature, computational or biological, makes eye contact with a person, tracks her gaze, and gestures with interest toward her, that person will experience the creature as sentient, even capable of understanding her inner state.

What is your law? [Thanks to a pointer from here.]