How To Stop Feeling Uncomfortable When People Look At You.

Have you ever noticed that you can stare at a baby for as long as you want?

Wait…that didn’t come out right. What I mean is, have you noticed that babies don’t react badly if you stare at them? They don’t get embarrassed or self-conscious. They don’t hide their faces. To a baby, a person staring at them or a camera pointing at them is the same as everything else; momentarily interesting and then irrelevant.

So what’s their secret? Why is it that beyond a certain age we turn into awkward, sweaty-palmed parodies of ourselves the moment we feel like we’re being scrutinised? The answer is that babies haven’t yet been convinced that the way that other people see them is the way they should see themselves.

From a babies perspective (and from yours too if you think about it) they’re a unique type of human being. Sure, just like everybody else they have arms and legs, fingers and toes, and a torso holding it all together, but at the top of all that, in the spot where everybody is always looking and pointing, there isn’t anything at all.

Other people have two small eyes to look out of, but the baby has a single, panoramic, uninterrupted field of view. Other people have heads wrapped in skin and hair, but the baby’s head is completely transparent. Other people’s faces can be…