The Introvert

You take a nice wildlife safari on a weekend, and then head for the zoo in the hope of a quiet, leisurely stroll - only to be greeted by a noisy pack of excited school kids. And they are there in huge numbers, all over the place! :-) Your eyes start looking for a quiet, withdrawn kid in the lot; and you instantly spot one. You look on, and you spot another one. There would be quite a few more in the whole lot. Bonafide introverts. "Excitement" won't come to them easily, without strong reasons. The talks going on are just "too much", and not "meaningful enough" for them to find a genuine connect. The nervous, shy one appears awkward amidst all this; the other one looks relatively self-assured, and detached. You can spot them right on, as you have been one yourself.

Over time, with age and experience, these kids will outgrow some of this innate reserve and withdrawnness; but they won't go completely against their original "make". While socializing will become less of a hardship; small talk will continue to drain them out; and long, meaningless chatter will still leave them feeling all lost and depleted. They will generally talk when they have something "real" to tell you, not just to fill up the "silence spans". Try to engage them at a deeper, sincere, and meaningful level; and they may just spontaneously start opening up the recesses of their minds and hearts out to you..

Even as the unsure one may strive to "fit in" every now and then, especially as a kid in "need" of general acceptance; you can tell he's an introvert by observing his "settling point" - the equilibrium he will consistently fall back to, every time he tries to "fake" who he is. Through a lot of painful growth, he will eventually learn to be "real", and at ease with this equilibrium.

There's a beautiful quotation (attributed to Kipling) from a Christie novel that's quoted in the rather different context of the eternity of truth and justice, but applies equally well here - "Nothing is ever settled until it's settled right". Our true, eternal nature is much the same. Try as much as you will to disturb that "stable equilibrium" - there is a nature's way of positively restoring it back, after all the dynamics has played itself out. And being at ease, and living out that real nature is our wholeness, our integrity..