Popular belief would have it that being effusively social in nature is to be more empathetic, more in tune with others’ feelings. I would say from personal observation however that the opposite is true.
Extroverts are adept at picking up every little sign that flickers across the surface. They are excellent at functioning in groups, quickly perceiving hierarchies and balances of power. They know how to be friendly to everyone when it suits them, and will talk about their personal matters to anyone. They love to be around people as a whole but not necessarily persons.
This is where the introvert reigns. One who knows how to listen, who isn’t worried about dominating a given social interaction is far better at dealing with people one on one. Introverts understand that most people’s public persona is just a defense and are intrigued by what lies underneath. They understand it takes time and patience to know someone well, that one cannot really be spoken with until they are removed from surrounding social pressures.
An extrovert considers those who fail to impress them in the first two minutes boring. Persons are a commodity, if one fails to entertain, there’s always another more sensational channel to flip to. The crowds of people they gravitate towards ensure that there is an unlimited pool of persons through whom they can rotate at will. Extroverts are perhaps thought to be the empathizers because they loudly express sympathy should they learn of anyone’s misfortune. Then they move on to the next thing.
An extrovert measures their social life and that of others by how many friends, social contacts, how many social events they are invited to.
An introvert measures their social life by the quality of the people they have chosen to count as friends and of those whom they have had the opportunity to know.
When the world has turned on you, when you need someone to listen and understand, or at least really try to understand what you’ve been through. It is an introvert you are searching for.
4 Comments
An introvert living in an extrovert world.
I really like this article and thinks it puts the finger right on the spot.
As an introvert I dive deep into myself and spend a lot of time envisioning a fantasy world. I then put paint to canvas to depict this world to the people who can not go there with me.
The problem then is that as an artist you are expected to be a social animal that entertains and loves having people around you.
This is very draining so I have found that the internet is an excellent way of having it both ways. Now I can interact in a “shallow” way at the time of my choosing.
Agree with you that introverts are better at getting to know a person in depth then an extravert, but as introverts we ourselves also pick who we want to know in greater detail. I have no energy, time, or interest in getting to know everyone, but only a select few who peak my curiosity (for example at work I could care less what most of my workers did on the weekend, with the exception of a few). The extravert on the other hand can feign enough interest to make it seem like they care about everyone, which is what separates them from us.
The extravert might be able to dive deeply into a person, but they just don’t have the time, which is part of the curse of the extravert (I don’t always think that is a curse though).
You can focus on people.
Or
You can focus on persons.
If you had only a few hours in a gigantic art museum. You could rush through, see as much as possible, and then proceed to forget it all.
OR
You could figure out which items in the collection are of most interest to you, choose carefully, and take time to enjoy them. Chances are you’ll have gotten more out of your experience than if you had rushed through.
There are more people out there than we can ever have the time to know. You can either fill up the little black book with names and numbers or you can focus on a few life-long friends of long term potential.
Our time to live is steadily dwindling. If you were to go skydiving without a parachute tomorrow, who would you want to provide companionship and comfort during that long fall?
There is a certain honesty to the introvert. We can’t care about everyone and we don’t try to pretend that we do.
There is something less honest about the extrovert way. They too cannot care about everyone yet they often try to act as though they do.
I think we are on the same page here, just stating it differently.
Although, there is a great benefit to running through a museum quickly the first time, as it gives you an idea of what to focus on the next time you are there, and you insure that you don’t have that nagging guilt of missing on something you thought you would want to see but didn’t. That of course is if you expect to be back there again, but I digress.
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