the reality of an introvert

Somedays flow more naturally than others. It's like I have a maximum capacity for social interaction before I have to retreat into the sanctuary of my own thoughts away from the outer chaos. I watch other people and it seems like they don't register the same level of chaos in the outer world that I do. Perhaps they are oblivious or I am over thinking. I'm not sure if there's a balance between those or if one extreme is correct. What I do know is that I cannot always be engaged.

There is so much to process when I am engaget in what's going on in social settings. I automatically become incredibly aware of my environment and the state of the people in it and my concern is engaged and I cannot help but feel responsible on some level for those around me.  Typically I feel that my reservoir for pain is incredibly large - perhaps unusually - and thus I am capable of taking on the pain and discomfort of others to help relieve the burden. But at some point I become exhausted by the social engagement and just want to hide away in a cave with just my thoughts.

I live so much inside my head that most of my reality is mainly found there. Maybe that's hard for the people around me. They feel they don't know me and that I am elusive. I am not really I just forget to let myself out of my thoughts - i forget that others are not inside of my inner world with me. And I assume they are comfortable.

I am working on this. But it's a process far from refinement. 

Root Cause

It amazes me that inner complexities can boil down to absolute simplicity - that all the levels and layers and intricately woven webs that make up a person, their motivations, their thoughts attitudes and perspectives grow out of one root. The more people I come across in life and the more of myself I get to know and examine the more I realize that there are these tiny little defining moments which all of these complexities grow out of. So many of these moments are so small that they seem at first to escape recollection - just pieces of something not even worth mentioning - but they shape so much of how we interact with the world around us.

I never cared much for people's praise - at times I actually dislike it, especially when it's at the cost of another's self-esteem. I know exactly where this comes from. When I was ten years old my brother and sister and I went to visit my grandfather and his wife in Florida. The entire trip was full of these little moments in which it was clear that my grandfather was placing me above my siblings. It enraged me - for all our difference they are my siblings and we were all children and deserved equal outpourings of love. It's not that I don't want to be told I am good or pretty or smart - it's that I don't want to be held publicly as a measure of those things - no one is less because I am whatever it is that I am. It always seemed unjust and still in those moments I'm a ten year old girl with no recourse against the injustice.

On the other side of that I find my vanity - the only place from which I am ever truly offended. And I also know well the root of that uprising. I was twelve and I had started a new school and my mother came to pick me up late in the afternoon. I was on the field and we were all playing soccer, she called my name and everyone turned to look at her and then they looked back at me slightly confused wondering who this olive complected woman as round as she was tall could possible be. We were a stark contrast that I noticed for the first time as I walked toward her. I was slim and pale, my blonde hair falling straight down my back and she was heavy and dark with short curls framing her face. Her pants were tan and creased in the front under her tummy from sitting and I thought they made her look lazy and disheveled. I was twelve and embarrassed by her lack of care and I promised myself quite sternly that I would never let myself look like that. It pains me now to think back on that memory how callused and selfish I was - completely blind to the reality of beauty and life. But that promise took hold of me nonetheless and I chased healthy eating and fitness, beauty products and fashion - always trying to outrun the image of my mother on that day. So although I generally dislike an abundance of praise from the moments with my grandfather, I also want my vanity to be appeased from that moment with my mother - creating a seemingly disparate complexity of extremes both seeking to be simultaneously satisfied - at first glance looking inconsistent and contradictory at best.

In reality both of these boil down to the same place - a desire for congruency. I wanted to be congruent with my siblings - to share an identifiable likeness that meant we belonged together and deserved equality in treatment. I wanted my mother to be congruent with me so that I felt like we belonged together - that there was some noticeable purpose to our ties that couldn't be denied by human eyes. These moments lead to unconscious patterned behaviors that never actually satisfy the desire they are aimed at, and thus continue on it perpetuity. And where does this need for congruency stem? From a need for identity - a frame of reference from which to build my understanding of who I am and what that means. To find congruency within my family meant that my identity was linked to them creating a sense of security in its ability to persist and purposefulness to my being. Now looking at all of this scribbled out across this page, the silly degradation of these needs and desires into behaviors creating the opposite effect seems nonsensical - but then again the evolution of the self is a peculiar thing.

The Battlefront

I spend a great deal of my time managing conflict and mitigating losses. Knowing when to fight and when to walk away is one of the most important things I've learned in life. You cannot engage in every battlefront you're presented with. Sometimes there is simply more to be gained by walking away. It's not a retreat out of fear or cowardice it's a cognitive choice. If you cannot win, why waste your time engaging? Or if you can win but at the cost of something else, why waste your resources? I think a lot of people approach conflict as a proving ground of might - If I stand here long enough and loud enough someone will be impressed with my presence. And perhaps that is true, but anyone impressed by such simplistic and brute measures probably isn't someone that you needed to impress anyway. And in this case what we are really looking for is recognition - we want to know that we have value and sometimes as people it seems much easier to lessen an opponents value than to raise our own, especially when it seems no one is listening.

Conflict should teach us about ourselves - our capabilities, our limitations, and most importantly our ability to truly be aware of our fears and desires. Most people fight for one of two reasons - they fear something or they want something. Unfortunately we often get swept away in the ebb and flow of emotions during a conflict and lose sight of the reasons behind our conviction to fight. This is where I stop. Sure the rage flushes over me and my thoughts spin in a flurry of outrage, but I don't act in this moment. I stop and ask myself what it is a really want and am I going to accomplish it by flying off the handle or raining down destruction. Typically the answer is no. And the more often these moments rise up in me the more I learn about myself, and the less I feel the need to fight. There are far better, easier, more lucrative, and more mutually beneficial ways to get what you want. A little critical examination and a lot of creativity can go much farther than a burst of sharp words or elaborate schemes.

Anymore when someone tries to start a conflict with me I immediately look for the problem that has driven them to those means. The problem is seldom found directly in the person someone starts conflict with. Other people instead facilitate an exercise of might over something greater - I can beat a person but I might not be able to beat an injustice. If I can identify someone's problem and help them solve it, or at least relieve some of the burden then I have at best created an ally and at worst silenced an enemy. Either way my position is better than it was before the conflict arose.

And so it begins

I've had a lifelong love affair with words drawn by their form and function, their ability and limitation, the immense joy and astounding pain they deliver so effortlessly. As this affair has progressed I have come to realize that what I love most is that words become something real to those that hear them. Reality thus is spoken into existence controlled by so many, often unaccounted for variables that are delivered by people with little awareness of what exactly it is that they are doing. It is through words that we create our reality and the reality of so many others that we touch. Yet so often we neglect our words, lose our voices in the noise of daily life or manipulate them to ease our pain through the verbal blows we throw at an unsuspecting world. There is a power in words that cannot be met by any other medium. Words have incited nations, fueled rebellions, created unity, established peace, and so much more. The outcome of one simple word, taking mere seconds to utter, can be a reality spanning epochs. The power lies with directing the dialogue, the choice between progress and destruction is no more than a word. Let us spend our words with purpose.

I place my words here with no real intention attributed to their delivery. I suppose I write just to write anymore. It lends clarity to the foggy places in my mind, fleshes out ideas that one day will become a reality for me. More than anything I suppose I seek to refine my understanding of my own perspective, taking it out of my mind and creating a tangible rendition of it allows a critical process to begin. In the end I suppose I am always looking for something, for a connection or an understanding perhaps. Most often it is something that I cannot even begin to identify, let alone ascertain the driving force behind it - perhaps it is merely an insatiable curiosity about the inner workings of both my mind and the world around me. What I do know is that on this blank space I find whatever it is I am looking for and it drives me onward. It provides an unrelenting motivation that brings peace and satisfaction to the otherwise mundane rigor of daily reality.