Last week I was sitting in City Hall Park, doing a half-assed mixture of homework and people watching (very little homework, quite a bit of people watching), when I noticed something that bothered me. Out of all the people sitting on the benches or standing by the fountain or walking through the park, only a fraction were looking up. Most of the park’s occupants had their heads turned down towards their phones or their feet.

I was confused by this. A beautiful sky, a beautiful fountain, and yet the pavement is getting more attention than anything else.

As I was watching the multitude of people, I only made eye contact with maybe seven. I was there for over an hour, during prime after-work time, and only about seven of the hundreds of people who walked by even looked at me. And as they passed only inches away from each other, even less made eye contact with fellow pedestrians.

On my walk home, I was thinking about why so many people look down in such a beautiful park. Midwalk, I realized that I was also looking down. I was seeing more pant legs and shoes than faces and skyscrapers. And everyone around me was doing the same thing. The phenomenon wasn’t just in the park, it’s a citywide, worldwide mechanism of isolation.

After catching myself, I tried to make it a point to keep my gaze up and in front of me, even daring to look at the faces of the people walking past. On the rare occasion that I caught someone else’s eye, we would both shrink away from the pseudo interaction, as if even eye contact was too intimate for strangers to partake in together.

Why do we do this? Why are we so accustomed to isolating ourselves, that we take drastic, depressing measures to avoid possible interactions with people on the street? We walk down the sidewalk with headphones in and gazes down, completely unreachable by the people around us. Whether you’re in a beautiful city or a lethargic small town, people do it. We don’t see each other when we pass by, because we’re in an age where it’s taboo and dangerous to communicate with strangers.

So, look up. Make the conscious decision to be open to and aware of the people around you. Make eye contact. If you’re feeling especially daring,

SMILE. You’ll see people and things happening that are interesting, and more beautiful than the pavement or your twitter feed or your shoes. Look up.