Caring For Your Introvert

(h/t SarahK, my blogmommy who's getting married in a month!!)

A very cool op-ed piece from Atlantic Online, called Caring For Your Introvert, about that segment of the population which cherishes solitude. A fun quote:

Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours. "Introverts," writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, in an online review of a recent book called Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money? (I'm not making that up, either), "are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don't outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness." Just so.

The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books -- written, no doubt, by extroverts -- regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."

How many times have I wished I could pop up and just say something like that in a meeting where someone is just yammering on and on and on?

The notion of having to sit through a Sensitivity Training meeting, for example, makes me want to dive into a vat of hemlock-juice. First of all, I hate meetings. Second, I don't want to be more sensitive. I want everyone else to be LESS sensitive, so we can actually accomplish something instead of piddling around worrying about how someone FEELS. I don't CARE how you feel.

Okay, I do care.

[crickets chirping]

No, that's a lie. I really don't care. But I've learned how to pretend I do, because it helps me have friends and because I don't want to be a complete misanthrope.