What Are You Looking At?Shoes? But... we're in the shampoo aisle.

My wife and I were watching one of her detective channel, real life, crime shows, and the perpetrator was stalking around a Wal-Mart, following a potential female victim.

As he was slowly positioning himself behind her… he was interrupted… by the ladies husband, the husband was meeting up with her with the shopping cart. You could see in the perpetrators body language that she was no longer a potential candidate. So he left.

All because… she was not alone.

I asked my wife if she ever noticed me looking around, when we are out and about, grocery shopping, or out to eat, or like the last time we were at Wal-Mart?

She said, “No why? What were you looking at? Shoes!? But we were in the shampoo aisle.”

I told her that during the course of my research into being a man I have found articles and resources that teach, “a man is aware of his surroundings.”

Situational awareness... is what they call it.

They also say if you have situational awareness you carry yourself in such a way that ‘the bad guys’ of the world, as predators, see this trait in you, and conclude you are not prey.

I told my wife, “When we are shopping I go into caveman mode, you do the gathering, and I do the hunting… watching out for predators.”

She thought I was being weird. I didn’t have the heart to tell her how many times I’ve seen men checking her out. Until they see me looking at them. Then they can’t divert their eye’s fast enough. It makes me wonder?

What do they see, when they see me… seeing them?

Now that I have more experience doing this, this… “sizing people up,” and as I work to be more of a man, I can only conclude that the way you feel confident about yourself, your skills, and your physical abilities must exude from within, and is ‘palpable,’ to the point that people ‘feel your presence,’ even from two aisle’s over in a Wal-Mart.

“Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.”

~ Proverbs 4:25

We depend a great deal on our eye sight. They say, “Seeing is believing.” I don’t believe that, but that’s what ‘they’ say. And that’s where we usually start, by looking at something.

I say, “Look at their shoes.”

In the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ during the ending monologue, delivered by Morgan Freeman, he says, “I mean, really, how often do you look at a mans shoes?” Andy Dufresne needed a good pair of shoes, to help him make good his escape… as he was able to dress the part of the depositor he had created for the banks, that he and the warden used to hide the money from the crooked scams.

The movie quote sticks with me when I’m out in public. Am I being judgmental? To be honest… yes. I start with the shoes, and then, the physique. Remember… I’m in ‘protect mode’ here.

I’ve found all of us have more things in common than we do differences. But I know that there are some bad apples out there looking to do more damage than just hitting the ground, and if me ‘fixing my gaze before me,‘ is enough deterrent for oglers, and keeps the real predators at bay… then that is my duty.

As we progress on our journey of manhood… become aware of your surroundings.

Depending on the terrain, you may find yourself surrounded by Crocs, Caterpillars, Leopard prints, or stealthy Pumas.

All image’s courtesy of Pixabay, or myself, unless otherwise noted.