A state of being, but not being too much or near much.
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| I get to stay home and play games and read books and watch movies guilt free? Sweet! |
If
we are talking in extremes then it is time for us to talk in bubbles. People
exist in bubbles, and these bubbles vary in size and the general volume of
things they encompass. An extrovert’s bubble is a rather large thing,
encompassing quite a bit of space and possibly even encompassing other human
beings within it, making it the extrovert’s state of being, but when the time
comes for the extrovert to take a step back, clear her/his mind or just be
refreshed, he/she will generally step out of the large bubble and go into the
vast nothingness for a breather. An introvert’s bubble is rather small, you
could call it a personal size, generally encompassing little beyond themselves
and their core activities/passions and when the time comes for the introvert to
take a step back, clear her/his mind or just be refreshed, he/she will
generally step out of their personal bubble and go where things are voluminous.
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| How I feel after too much social interaction. |
But
of course, that is truly true if we speak in extremes and a true wholesome
‘extrovert’ or ‘introvert’ doesn’t exist outside of mental asylums and bad fan-fiction.
First things first, getting personal stuff out of the way, there is the fact
that I am largely the poster boy of introverts – to the extent that I seem to
legitimately suffer from ‘people sickness’ and seem to be capable of
‘overdosing’ on social interaction, I will often feel fatigued when I have to
meet too many people, interact with people I don’t know or have to deal with
people I don’t know or find annoying (which is often the same thing), and when
a friend gets all excited and says ‘let’s go clubbing’ I concur by bringing out
my baseball bat. My ‘stepping back’ might involve a preference for interacting
with people but even then I want a limiter on the number of people, their
sobriety, nature of music playing and so on. My introversion has gone to the
brink such that this blog exists solely because I cannot talk to anyone about
the things I write about here, ergo this entire blog is basically me talking to
myself and that helps explain why I haven’t yet bothered to setup an actual
homepage for it (which might help the doctors when I finally go mad). Combine
my introversion with my lack of expressiveness and if I had a rupee for every
time someone asked me why I’m not ‘having fun’ I’d be rich enough to hire
people to talk to me.
Then
there’s all the shlock that exists in culture regarding the ‘traits’ of
extroverts and introverts, and by ‘traits’ I refer to things such as
activities, abilities and talents. There’s a whole lot of bollocks you can find
on the internet (protip: don’t google ‘bollocks’) that usually label introverts
as this and extroverts as that: most common being the labelling of introverts
as geniuses and extroverts as loudmouths. It’s important to keep in mind that
all humans are, at a basic level, entirely the same and your relative dumbness
or intelligence has got nothing to do with the general social construct and
interactivity levels you follow. I’m incredibly dumb at several things – all my
knowledge of banking begins and ends with my ability to use a card and write
checks (write checks to use my card to write checks to use my card to write
checks to use my card), and I am the same at several other things.
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| 'Socialising' can feel like this at times. |
Neither
am I a cynical, dragon-impersonating being who keeps extroverts at arm’s length
both physically and mentally – that’s just a dramatization of a simple divide.
Yes I, like many other introverts no doubt, hold a bit of disdain for
extroverts and the blame for the presence of this disdain can be placed upon –
everyone’s favourite – the educational system. We surely devote a huge portion
of our energy to celebrating the loud man and the strong man (wherein man
refers to person) and often use saccharine words such as ‘dynamic’, ‘outgoing’
and ‘happy-go-lucky’ to mask things like loud, obnoxious and reckless. They who
speak louder and take charge forcefully are celebrated – those who are more
calculative and open-minded are generally disregarded, or more commonly
outshouted. Let me take a detour to emphasise that this is derived via personal
experience and is therefore the ultimate truth in this universe, because we all
know that personal opinions and experiences are wholly representative of the
entire world, including the Martians that watch you sleep at night. For me, a
poster boy extrovert might be a tad obnoxious and loud, but on the flipside for
the poster boy extrovert I, poster boy introvert that I am, might be a tad
morose and dull… yet I have extroverts I get along with swimmingly and then
there is the fact that these extroverts get along with me swimmingly. Yes, we
have our stark difference, I might not find the idea of hitting the town to be
pleasurable while they might not find the idea of sitting down with our
pretentious pipes and talking philosophy to be pleasurable. That is life.
The
‘Introverts as Victims’ train-of-though is a direct offshoot of all the
extrovert and general ‘being loud’ loving that goes on as we grow up. A quiet
child is frowned upon, the active child is smiled upon, the child that doesn’t
wish to flood itself with company is frowned upon, the child who knows everyone
is smiled upon. A part-and-parcel of the problem is that introverts often end
up being paradoxically self-victimising – drawing upon (the glory that is)
myself once again – they grow up being labelled things such as ‘shy’, ‘scared’,
‘incapable of social interaction’, ‘quiet’ and so on, and if you repeat some
things like black speech then the person is bound to begin to believe it these
labels. My first-hand experience is that thinking things through and
contemplating things is generally looked down upon, possibly because people
enjoy spouting non-sense such as ‘seize the day’ and ‘follow your dreams’.
Well, my dreams recently told me that if I plummet off the top of a mountain I
will learn how to fly… call me a pessimist, but I don’t think that’s how things
would work out.
All
in all, it’s important to keep in mind that an introvert could probably use a
hug more often than you think, and that if an introvert agrees to accompany you
somewhere they would not typically wish to go realise that they are there for
the GREATER GOOD.
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| The fish represents the world trying to tell me to 'lighten up' or 'live a little'. |
Dear abyss, this article
has turned out so saccharine that I wish to do naught but puke. I would go over
it and add the occasional outburst of nihilism or pointless sarcasm, but I
think I’ve spoken to myself enough today.
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