A few days back I posted a link to this excellent post about introverted personality. It received quite a few comments, although if you don't have Twitter or Facebook accounts you may not have seen them all.
To cut a longish story shortish, a fair few of my acquaintances who I suspect have similarly introverted personalities praised the post and suggested that it helped them feel better about themselves.
Michael Stipe once said that his introverted personality made him highly creative but lousy company at dinner parties. Anyone else ever find that the conversation in their head is much better than the one actually happening? That's me in the corner.
Don van Vliet, known to many as the late Captain Beefheart said, 'The way I keep in touch with the world is very gingerly, because the world touches too hard.' I would hazard a guess, from what I know of the good Captain, that he too sought comfort from his inner world.
My new, additional thought is this. Social media has been a wonderful help to me in being in touch with others and touching gingerly. I send out a comment to my fellow introverts and some of them gently engage with it. It's quite a lovely thing. It is like telling the world what is in my head, knowing that most will ignore it but some will stop for a chat from time to time and then leave really quite early.
It's taken me a while to get to that point, realising that there was truth in Henri Nouwen's warning, 'Don't be afraid of the raw material of your lives.'
4 comments:
Steve,
Thanks for that post - it's nice to have someone articulate something close to my own nebulous thoughts, particularly the part about the conversation in your head. Of course, as introverts, we're most unlikely to get round to telling each other these things! And I think you've expressed for me why FB can sometimes be such a beautiful thing.
Thanks for bloggings - there are definitely people out here who appreciate it, even if we don't often get round to saying it out loud!
"Anyone else ever find that the conversation in their head is much better than the one actually happening? That's me in the corner."
Love it! Me too
I sometimes find that facebook is good, but at other times I feel like people try to reach into my 'cave time' and steal my privacy. The article was helpful to me as an introvert, but I suspect 'sympathy ignored' by extroverts.
The introverted half of me chimes with everything you say and shares the sense of relief. The extrovert side is left rather uneasily wondering how crass and intrusive my well-meaning attempts to communicate may sometimes be. Oh well, I guess I'll just get on with being us!
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