Look Me in the Eye

Based on this blog one might be led to believe that my only philanthropic interest is the Food Bank.  Yes, this blog did start as my weight loss journey to help support the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, but it is in no way my only interest..  What I have found is that once you start to help other people you get a certain personal satisfaction that is way beyond what you put in.

Today I attended a lunch for Dress For Success where one of my fellow Food Bank board members, Debbie Aiken is the board chair.  It was inspiring to learn all that Dress for Success did to help women become self supporting through job search and interview skills training as well as help to obtain the right “look” for searching for a job.  I was somewhat familiar with their mission because my husband Russ had a team from CMG Partners, his strategic marketing consulting firm do a little pro-bono session to help Dress for Success come up with a good tag line and elevator pitch.  What they developed was “Dress for Success – more than a suit.”

I listened to the inspiring and widely varied stories of the women who had been helped by Dress for Success and how important learning basic skills were for helping them land a job.  The women I met shook my hand and looked me in the eye as they greeted me.  This skill is something I take for granted, but realized today was something some people needed to be taught at a later stage of life.

I can remember my friend Missy Brinegar giving me the best parenting advice when Carter was only about four.  Her boys are a few years older than Carter and I always commented on what nice manners they had with adults.  Missy told me this trick to get a child to look an adult in the eyes when they meet them and shake their hand — tell them before they do it, “I want to figure out what color eyes that person has and after you have said hello to come tell me.”  It is a brilliant way to take the scary out of a child looking directly into a strangers face.

I understand that meeting a stranger, especially one you might want to give you a job, can be just as scary for adults as it can for children.  What I hope is that we can all look people we meet in the eye and really see them for the fellow human beings that they are.  It is just by the luck of birth that some of us ended up having parents who teach us these lessons when we are little and some who do not.