Choosing Not to Look Away

The first time I ventured out on my own in public after my partner died, I made myself go back to a mall we used to spend hours in together (in hindsight, not the gentlest choice). It felt like almost every shop had a memory attached to it, which meant I spent most of the walk from the car renegotiating with myself about whether this was a good idea.

It was not, for the record, a good idea.

I went anyway, because I needed to reclaim my world and my space.

I was wearing glasses that day, not contact lenses. My eyes were too puffy and sore to put contacts in, which, if you know me, is a dead giveaway. Contacts are non-negotiable out in public most days. Glasses mean something has gone properly wrong.

So there I was, in a place full of memories I hadn't asked to relive, in the glasses I only wear when I'm falling apart, eyes swollen from crying, keeping my head down the entire time. Looking up meant someone might look back, and I didn't have anything to offer anyone that day.

A man I had never seen before walked straight toward me. I assumed he had the wrong person and kept staring at the floor, waiting for him to realise his mistake and move along.

He didn't.

He stood there long enough that I eventually looked up, and when I did, he held my eyes for a second and said, "You look beautiful today. You're crushing it." Then he walked away, presumably to get on with whatever he'd actually come in for.

He wasn't fooled, and I don't think he meant to be believed literally. The glasses and the red eyes weren't subtle. I think he saw exactly what anyone would have seen, clocked that I needed a lift, and decided to hand me one anyway.

A friend and I were talking about this last weekend, the way you do when a conversation starts somewhere ordinary and ends up somewhere neither of you expected. We got onto the strangers we've never seen again who did one small thing we still tell stories about. The stories weren't dramatic, but in each case they'd clearly noticed something was off and chose to do something about it, rather than deciding it wasn't their business.

That's what has stuck with me for years and why I'm so grateful every time I think of him. The easier and safer response would have been to look away, the way everyone else in that mall did, probably telling themselves it was politeness, or none of their business. Instead he did the less comfortable thing. He walked over, said one kind sentence, and left, without asking what was wrong, without needing an explanation, without making it about anything other than the lift I clearly needed.

I'm almost embarrassed to say it took me a while to learn to do what he did. For years, if someone went quiet in a meeting, I told myself it wasn't my place to ask, so I let it pass. If someone was short with me on a call, I decided they were being difficult rather than wondering what had happened in the hour before it. Both were, technically, a version of looking away. It just didn't feel like that at the time. It felt like professionalism, or respect for boundaries, or simply staying in my lane.

These days I try to catch myself before I look away. It's not automatic, and I'm not going to pretend I've turned into someone who greets every off day with the warm curiosity of a golden retriever. But I catch it more than I used to, and I can trace the change back to a stranger who had absolutely nothing to gain from choosing not to look away from a woman in glasses with puffy eyes, and telling her she was crushing it when he'd clearly noticed she wasn't.

Good leadership gets discussed mostly in terms of what you build: the systems, the clarity, the accountability. Nobody puts "chose not to look away" on a scorecard. But it might be one of the more underrated things a leader can do, because looking away is always available, always easier, and almost always mistaken for tact. Psychological safety, in practice, isn't a workshop or a values statement. It's whether the people around you believe that on the day they can barely hold themselves together, someone will choose not to look away.

None of that costs the person offering it very much. It didn't cost that stranger anything to keep walking, the way everyone else did. He said one sentence, gave me a moment I clearly needed, and left, probably without a second thought, and definitely without knowing he'd still be living rent-free in a stranger's blog post almost a decade later. But I have carried it for years as proof that one sentence, from someone who owed me nothing, can carry more weight than it has any right to.

He wasn't trying to fix my day. He just chose not to walk past it.

I don't know what happened to him, or whether he remembers a woman in glasses, standing in a mall full of someone else's memories, at all. I doubt it. But I know what it taught me, even though he'll never know he taught it: that choosing not to look away costs you almost nothing, and it's very often the only thing that actually matters.

I'm still practising it.

He, whoever he was, already had it figured out.