Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!
May 14, 2008<headline paraphrased from Waiting for Godot>
A guy with a blog is an introvert? Figure that out. Run a Google search for introvert vs. extrovert and you’ll get lots of posts like this one where people complain about how society excludes them and how people, even friends and significant others, misunderstand them. With that in mind, let me point you in the direction of this article about introverts from The Atlantic. It must have been linked a jillion and one times already. Jillion-two.
It’s me. I’m the introvert. I like books. I like cooking. Hiking. Gardening. Watching cream swirl in my coffee. Decorating my house with treasures that have significance only known to me (and maybe one other person). I like thinking without speaking. But I like talking too. I like people. They aren’t a burden and don’t really wear me out. If they’re the right people. Sometimes the wrong people can be entertaining too.
Conventional wisdom says that introverts are ground into a paste by parties and social situations. That they need time to recharge. I feel perfectly fine after a night of fraternizing with colleagues and friends. Some gatherings make me tired. The boring ones. I think I can find common ground on this with the other three-quarters to half of the population that are extroverts. Boring people and parties come in all flavors. But a room full of people ruminating is a library. No one likes libraries.
Am I abnormal because I don’t have a smooth anecdote for every social interaction? Larry David made a mint off the awkwardness that comes with everyday contact between humans. It’s normal. And it isn’t an offshoot of my introversion. It’s just me.
My brain is apparently designed to take in information during conversations and store it away for future reference, not necessarily to formulate the next topic based on what I’m hearing. But I like conversation with others. I don’t deliberately isolate myself. Human society demands interaction. People thrive and grow based on their social networks. It’s just how our world works. I get that.
There’s an interesting book on this topic that I read (mostly, which means I slightly didn’t) a couple years ago. The Loner’s Manifesto by Anelli Rufus outlines the fallacy in the statement that people who are alone just lack the skills to connect with others. The book goes beyond the point that introverts are biologically different. Rufus doesn’t whine about being oppressed by a society of extroverts. She examines societal views of loners and the impact on people who choose isolation. She cites examples that I can identify with, but I’m not sure her conclusions meet up with my point of view either. She revels in those actions that defy society in unconventional ways. For example, she concludes her book with a story of her father on his deathbed asking to be alone. I may be an introvert, but it feels cold-hearted and unsentimental to highlight this. Sort of paints us as selfish. It lacks the depth of feeling that all introverts crave. Deep emotional examination is the reason why we exist. Or at least why I exist. I’m not a loner. There aren’t things about me you shouldn’t understand. (Poor Pee Wee).
This post was originally a vehicle to link that Atlantic article at the top of this page. I thought this was a topic I wanted others to consider. But I’m left with the feeling that human behavior varies too much from person to person to lump people into behavioral groups based on what part of our brain we use to get our data about the world. So don’t blame the introvert in me and I won’t blame the extrovert in you for your reactions or actions… to whatever happens in this world. The warp and woof of our lives forms a pattern too complicated for such a simple explanation.
