No explanation necessary.

Introverts commonly have little patience for small talk. Which is why I found this little blurb so amusing, from an article called, "How to Piss Off a Dane."

Tactic #1: Ask “How are you?”
I learned this one within days of moving to Denmark, and was fortunate enough to be clued in by a teacher the first time I made the mistake. 

The American phrase “how are you?” is a source of amusement for the Danes — it’s a big, fat joke that Americans ask this question in passing with no intention of stopping and listening to the response. If you want to make a friend, ask this question when you have 5-10 minutes to spare. Ask it merely in greeting/passing and that Dane will probably think you’re the most insincere person on the planet.

How many times do you pass someone in the hallway at work with a cursory, "Hey, how's it going?" or get a walk-by "Heyhowareya" from a colleague who doesn't even bother to stop long enough to hear you mumble the obligatory "Fine, howboutchu?"

Can we just admit that none of us care how anyone else is doing? And that the worse you feel yourself, the less you want to hear about someone else's weekend, or how nice the weather is for the fifteenth time that day, or really anything unimportant. There should be some sort of signal so people know when you're in one of those "need to know information only, please" moods.

In the meantime, I suggest we high-tail it to Denmark where minding your own business is an art form.

How to listen to introverts

I have this terrible habit. I'm a great listener, but when it comes time to talk about myself, I find it really hard to share. Even with friends, there seems to be an unspoken checklist of criteria that needs to be met before I can open up. Must feel safe, must be somewhere not too public, must feel friend is interested in listening to me. If interrupted, abort sharing altogether.

It's lonely up there on Introvert Mountain.

But some people instinctively know how to listen to introverts. (Many of them, also introverts.) And as for everyone else? Just keep a few things in mind.

photo by Ardon LXXXIII

Ask questions. 
It's hard for me to share my private thoughts, even with the people I trust the most. I'm skittish - it's not something I'm proud of, it just is. Ask me what's going on, and if I seem to struggle for words, keep asking me questions. How does that make you feel? What do you think would happen if you didn't? Why do you think she said that? Help me sort through my own thoughts.

But also, shut up.
If I sense that you're not really interested in listening to me, or that you're distracted by something else, I'll clam up. This is also not an opportune time to make jokes (and believe me, it pains me to say that, as nearly every other moment in life could benefit from some well-timed witticisms). Just get me going and jump in with well-timed questions if the conversation lags.

Be patient.
It's okay to let the silence stretch on for a bit, I'm probably gathering my thoughts. Introverts like to have fully formed thoughts before they share them, whereas extroverts are known for thinking through their ideas and feelings aloud.

Recognize this moment's importance.
If I'm confiding in you, I need you. I'm indebted to you. I'm looking for your help and your kindness in giving me a rare outlet to share my feelings, and I want to hear your opinion, perspective, or advice. Please recognize that it's not a vulnerability I share lightly, but if you give me a bit of your time, I'll hold you in high esteem and feel bonded with you in a way I share with only a few other people. If you're looking for a way to feel closer to an introvert in your life, this is a phenomenal way, but you've got to do it right.

Make sure we're somewhere private. 
If you ask me personal questions and we're surrounded by a group of friends or coworkers within easy earshot, I'm not going to open up. It's not a rebuff on your kindness, I just don't feel comfortable knowing people might hear me. If there are people around, I'll want to speak very quietly, or move to a corner of the room. One-on-one is the best way to get an introvert to open up.


Don't change the subject.
Or interrupt. And if there's an interruption - a waitress, say, or your phone rings - encourage me to continue after it's passed. Interruptions are the easy way out for introverts. They scare us into silence and then we go back to living inside our heads. We'll be grateful forever if you turn your attention back to our problems and urge us to continue.

In the end, it might be more work to get introverts to open up and speak freely, but it's worth it. (Really - we have all kinds of interesting thoughts you might want to hear. What do you think we're doing all the time in silence?) You'll make the introverts in your life happy, you'll gain greater insight into who they are as people, and your listening skills will be as well-honed as those fine Japanese knives I can't afford.

And if none of this works, well...just make a pot of tea for us both and sit and enjoy the silence.

Some of the best animals are solitary

I stumbled across a list of solitary animals on wikipedia. Solitary animals are those that spend most of their lives alone, with exceptions for mating and raising young, and they include:

• Boa constrictors
• Rhinos
• Tigers
• Grizzly Bears
• Moray eels
• Cougars (insert mating joke here)

...and last but not least...

• the Honey Badger

Take your pick of your new power animals, folks. I think Jung would've been an Eastern Pine Marten. (Can you see the resemblance?) 

The Popularity of More

A friend sent me an article from the NY Times entitled, "The Rise of the New Groupthink."

It begins, "Solitude is out of fashion." Which is true. We seem to have embraced this sort of space-age ideal that we should all be surrounded by our comrades in technology, 24/7. I can't imagine much time for solitude on the Starship Enterprise, or the Death Star, where soldiers march in buddy-pairs everywhere they go. I suppose we can thank George Lucas and his predecessors for our idea of near-constant companionship as the wave of the future.

The irony, of course, is that the authors of such science fiction or works of fantasy undoubtedly spent a huge amount of time alone dreaming up these over-populated worlds.

Which is why this photo is one of my favorites. Hemingway, in Ketchum, Idaho (home of Sun Valley), literally kicking a can down the road. Clearly, he's not entirely alone - someone took the photo - but that feeling of solitude is there. Wide open spaces, an author on an aimless walk, taking a moment of whimsical pleasure just for the sake of his own enjoyment. There used to be a widespread respect for solitude. Perhaps it was a luxury only the upper classes could afford - it's hard to find time for yourself when you sleep with two other people in a room. Perhaps it was just that solitude was so much more within reach - all those hours of involuntary silence before television and cell phones and iPods - you'd be alone with your thoughts one way or another, so you might as well enjoy it.

Now the fashion is noise. Chatter. Small-talk. Socializing. Never eating lunch alone. Networking. Productivity. More, more, more.

There's a quiet but rising voice whispering, "less." Perhaps at the moment, that voice is just kicking a can down an isolated mountain road, but for all who know what they're listening for, it's there, ready to be heard.

A better way of thinking about introversion

I have this friend. She's an extrovert.

No, I know. It's okay. Really.

So this extrovert friend, we'll call her Pippa (because hey, why the hell not?), she's in a relationship with an introvert. Only she didn't know he was an introvert until she met me, and we became friends, and we started talking about this stuff.

And we started talking about this stuff because she would be like, "Let's get drinks after work on a Tuesday!" and I would be like, "Oh my god, no, I'm way behind on my solitude and relaxation. I couldn't possibly."

There's nothing wrong with me, or her, just like there's nothing wrong with the daytime even though there are no stars out. But she'd been feeling slighted because her boyfriend needed a good amount of time alone, and from an extrovert's perspective, it felt insulting.

I think every introvert has had some kind of relationship with a hardcore extrovert - a romantic relationship, a friendship, a family relationship. It can be tough to tell someone, "No, I don't want to hang out with your buddies at the bar tonight, again, and shout to have my opinion heard just so your bullheaded neighbor can spin his wheels to prove what an idiot he is." Especially when the prevailing convention is that everyone should love to go out to a bar and be steamrolled by six-foot-four PhD candidates who know nothing about the women's rights movement. Or whatever.

Lately, Pippa and I were talking and she said something that stuck with me. She said, "I don't mind being alone, I just want it to be by choice. I don't want to be alone because I have nothing better to do."

via pleated jeans

I think that's exactly true for introverts, too. It's not that we hate being around people - we just want it to be because we chose to be around people. Not because we couldn't get away.

It's a less polarizing view of personality types, as well - it's not that extroverts can't be alone and introverts freeze up around people. That's too simplistic. You might not even be able to tell an introvert from an extrovert at first blush; it's not like separating people by eye color. It's deeper than that.

You see it in our preferences. How we'd spend our time if there were no outside factors compelling us to act a certain way. No obligations, no guilt, no forces outside our control.

The perfect Saturday for me? A long day of being by myself capped with doing something social with a few friends that night.

Best of both worlds.

Pep Talk: On Relationships

Musical Introvert: Bruce Springsteen

Poets, man.

I'm not sure I can even do justice to my feelings for Bruce Springsteen. At least, not sensibly. Get me going and I know I'd turn into a rambling junkie, starting every sentence with "And Bruce says..." as rampantly as any girl Charles Manson brainwashed into the Manson Family. I know I'm not the only one who has these feelings. I mean, come on...

Just what were we SUPPOSED to feel upon seeing this cover for the first time? 

Springsteen, you sly dog. 

And what were we supposed to feel upon hearing the lyrics to "I'm On Fire" for the first time? 

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull,
And cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull.
At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
and a freight train running through the middle of my head.
Only you can cool my desire.
Oh, I'm on fire.


God help me, this song makes a phoenix out of every woman I know, leaving charred human-shaped smudges wherever we may have happened to have been during the opening bars.

So, okay, Springsteen is hot. But can a man who regularly gets up in front of crowds of ten of thousands of people really be called an introvert? Hell yes.

Back in his high school days, the nuns at his Catholic school have referred to Springsteen as a loner, only interested in the company of his guitar. He skipped his own high school graduation because he felt too uncomfortable to go. (We know one of our own when we see him.)

And many of his songs revolve around the theme of finding love and feeling acknowledged through a bond with one other person - creating a cocoon of safety from which to take on the world and tear it apart. I think introverts often feel alone, because so much of the world revolves making such inane small talk, it can be hard to feel like you've really connected with someone - like you've shared what really goes on inside you. But Bruce does the heavy lifting, dredging up all his innermost thoughts and fears and hopes and desires and laying them naked across the chords of his guitar. Anyone who's really listened to any of his lyrics could hardly deny his introspection.




To the lyrics! 

1) "Growing Up," from the album Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ
I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere
And you know it's really hard to hold your breath
I swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared,
I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress
Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth
But I got me a nice little place in the stars


2) "Badlands," from the album Darkness on the Edge of Town
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
I wanna find one face that ain't looking through me 

3) "Thunder Road," from the album Born to Run
You can hide 'neath the covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain 
For a savior to rise from these streets


4) "Two Hearts," from the album The River
Sometimes it might seem like it was planned
For you to roam empty-hearted through this land
Though the world turns you hard and cold
There's one thing, mister, that I know
That's if you think your heart is stone
And that you're rough enough to whip this world alone
Alone buddy there ain't no peace of mind
That's why I'll keep searching till I find my special one

5) "Cover Me," from the album Born in the U.S.A.
Well I'm looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me
Promise me baby you won't let them find us

I don't care how Jung would categorize you. One thing is absolutely clear: When Mr. Bruce Springsteen tells you he wants to be your friend and guard your dreams and visions, the only thing you can do is wrap your legs round those velvet rims and strap your hands across his engines.

Introvert on a Sunday Night

I keep thinking it's Saturday, because for perhaps the first time in my life, I have Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off tomorrow.

To celebrate a quiet stretch, finally, in what has been a hectic weekend, I'm going to dig into Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter and pray I have enough time and silence to actually figure out what the hell it's about.

Pep Talk: On Maturity

Pep Talk: On Quiet People

My new mascot is a Victorian robot named Tik-Tok

There's a movie I loved as a child - a movie I still love, despite how cheesy and poorly aged it is. Return to Oz was produced in the mid-80s as a sort of B-movie sequel to The Wizard of Oz, and starring Fairuza Balk and no one else you've ever heard of.

The plot, in a nutshell: No one believes Dorothy when she says Oz was more than a dream, and in the turn-of-the-century Kansas, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry decide electroshock therapy is the way to deal with Dorothy's delusions. So Dorothy goes into this center for treatment, but there's a big storm, and yaddy yaddy, she ends up back in Oz, which lies in ruin.

Dr. Worley and the electroshock therapy machine. 

One of the characters Dorothy meets in the ruined Oz is a wind-up mechanical soldier called Tik-Tok. He needs to be wound-up every so often to keep functioning. He's got separate mechanisms for thought, speech, and action. Sometimes his action mechanism will wind down first, but he can think and speak. Other times his thought runs out first, but he can move and speak gibberish.

I feel like Tik-Tok tonight. And it occurs to me that he's the perfect metaphor for introversion. 

Jack Pumpkinhead: If his brain's ran down, how can he talk? 
Dorothy: It happens to people all the time, Jack.

After a long day at work, I came home and wrote a condolence letter to a friend. I found out over Christmas that his wife of several decades had passed away a few months ago. She was someone who had always treated me with kindness and respect, and I felt I should tell him how much knowing her had improved my life. 

Writing a letter like that is emotionally draining. But when I was done, I caught up on the phone with an old, dear friend. We hadn't talked in months, there was a lot to cover. It was wonderful to talk to her and learn about her life, but eventually, I started to feel like Tik-Tok. 

Like my capacity for speech had just run out. Now here I sit, filled with thoughts, but I don't have the energy to converse. Only to write. 

I'll go to bed tonight, recharge, and wake up ready to make small talk. Ready to go to coworkers with the many questions I have about projects I'm working on. Ready to smile and laugh and be charming, when possible. But tonight, that mechanism has completely run out of energy. 

Remember that - introverts like people just fine. But if you come across someone who's being surly and irritable whenever you try to talk to them, they may have just run out of steam. Chances are, if you leave them alone for a while, able to sit in silence or with headphones on, they'll wind themselves back up and be perfectly pleasant a little later. 

And as for Tik-Tok, everyone should watch Return to Oz. If only for this reason: 

The second point is my favorite.

Introverts are great at laughing at themselves. But we're even better at laughing at other people. We see jokes others don't even notice...

Pep Talk: On Company

How to care for introverts

This has been floating around for a while - I've seen it several times now - but it always bears repeating.

*Respect their need for privacy.

*Never embarrass them in public.

*Let them observe first in new situations.

*Give them time to think. Don't demand instant answers.

*Don't interrupt them.

*Give them advanced notice of expected changes in their lives.

*Give them 15 minute warnings to finish whatever they are doing before calling them to dinner or moving on to the next activity.

*Reprimand them privately.

*Teach them new skills privately rather than in public.

*Enable them to find one best friend who has similar interests and abilities; encourage this relationship even if the friend moves.

*Do not push them to make lots of friends.

*Respect their introversion. Don't try to remake them into extroverts.

The funny thing about this list is that most of these things are just instructions on how not to act like a jerk. Reprimand people privately? I can't imagine anyone wouldn't appreciate that courtesy.