I think here (in the USA) we have a sort of built in intimacy blocker with our personal space issues. For instance, when we are young, we are taught not to "stare". If you see someone who looks different, looks good, looks scary, basically looks ANYWAY at all....we as children automatically want to stare at the person. But our mothers immediately stop us in our tracks, because "staring is rude".
But when you really think about it, why is staring rude?
Is it really just because we are afraid of intimacy as a whole country?
A friend of mine is a world traveler and has told me that in other countries, it is not necessarily rude to stare. So he would be sitting on a bus, crammed with with many people and sometimes animals, and people would just outright stare at him and not turn away if he turned to look at them. He said at first it made him self-conscious. But then it made him examine "why am I self-conscious just because someone is staring at me?" We then had the conversation of "is it because we fear inside that if someone is staring, it means they are getting to close too us? Or is it that we fear that their staring means that we don't look right? Or a combination?"
We seem to want to move through life in stealth mode, while still attending to all our hectic hustle bustle (as Lucky was saying above)...we don't want people to STARE at us.
But why? Just simply having a stranger look at us causes us to fear losing ourselves, perhaps? Maybe this person will see too deeply into us and take something away and run home with it? Why?
