Lifting my eyes from the ground

I pass a guy selling the Big Issue every day, twice a day, during the week. He stands on the Strand outside Boots. Usually he adopts a funny or silly pose to attract attention. He is popular with kids. But that is pretty much it. He sells his magazines in a commuter stretch where the traffic is either going to or from work, or to or from food, or to or from a workout. Nobody is interested in deviating from their single objective, me included. I've been doing this commute for some years, he has been there for that duration, and until only about 3 weeks ago I am ashamed to say I never raised my eyes to him. Everything that got in my line of sight between the station and the office where I was to begin my busy day of work, was an obstacle. Therefore I kept my eyes to the ground, like an animal tracking its prey. If you look at people walking up the Strand you realise pretty quickly that everybody does this. Not tourists, obviously, and there are a fair few thousand of those in the same neck of the woods. And it is precisely because of these bum bag wearing, map reading, sun visor sporting, merrily confused crowds, that we commuters are so fiercely single minded in the pursuit of our direction of travel.  But a few weeks ago, I found myself walking almost solo up that stretch of road. I say almost. I don't think it's possible for anyone to be the only person walking up the Strand. Maybe the government employs a core group of, say, 500 people to walk up and down it just to make it feel loved. I don't know. But at this time, which was not late at night, or that early in the morning, I found myself almost alone. The Big Issue vendor, seeing me approaching, struck a comic pose, and because I am British, and had not the comfort of a crowd, I was completely unable to ignore him. I slowed down fractionally, I smiled at him, and walked on by. Not until I reached the steps of the tube entrance did it compute in my head that the man had abandoned his pose to smile equally broadly back at me. He hadn't tried to sell me his magazine (which is just as well - I loathe magazines of pretty much every kind). He had just had a human reaction to my human reaction. A few days later I passed him early in the morning, I smiled and said Hello. He beamed and said hello back. Hello became a regular watchword between us, twice a day - en route to my office, and en route back to the tube. Then I took the daring step of deviating from our accepted interaction. I stopped, smiled and said Good Morning. Two words! Double my usual amount! And he said, Good Morning back to me. And then he said, thank you for speaking to me.  He said this genuinely gratefully. I pondered on it all the way to my desk. It depressed me extremely. This man was trying to sell the Big Issue, mostly not 6 feet away from two guys handing out free copies of the Evening Standard or Time Out, so he was in a hopeless competition. He was homeless and game about it, and he was being ignored quite routinely by thousands of people. Including me, up till then. I got up from my desk to make myself a cup of tea and on the way to the kitchen I passed a woman I had never looked at properly before. She was in a blue uniform toting a bucket and mop. I stopped, and said hello. She lifted her eyes from the ground and smiled at me, tentatively. Do you clean on this floor regularly? I asked. She nodded. What's your name, I asked. Fatima, she replied. Well, I said. Thanks Fatima, for keeping this floor clean. She smiled at me and took her bucket and mop away to another part of the office. I walked into the kitchen to get my tea. Pouring boiling water into my cup, I thought my eyes do not belong on the ground. They need to be up in the rest of my face, looking properly about me, so I can stop ignoring people I choose to edit out of my daily life, and give them the dignity of a courteous recognition. I went back to my desk, and got on with my day.