“You are my people.”
Susan Cain, the newly-crowned Queen of the Introverts, was speaking to a room full of bloggers, writers, and general internet folk at Blissdom Canada; a room in which she estimated 70-80% considered themselves introverts.
Including me.
In her bestselling book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Cain says that we’re taught from an early age that being quiet is wrong. In her talk, she used the example of being at summer camp as a young girl, with a suitcase full of books to read. Immediately she was overwhelmed with a “spirit” chant for the cabin and the idea that she needed to be “R-O-W-D-I-E”—rowdy (she says she was especially confused about shouting out a misspelled word—ha!). She put away the books, and didn’t touch them again all summer. She forced herself to be “rowdie.”
I’ve been shy my entire life—sometimes painfully so—but to paraphrase Cain’s presentation, I learned a long time ago to “fake it ‘til you make it.” So many of us do that: we lie our way through job interviews, afraid of seeming like someone who is “not a team player”; we don’t raise our hand and speak up when we know the majority is wrong, for fear of… what? I suppose it’s different for all of us.
Ever since a group of my friends presented me with a ticket, because they believed I deserved to be there, I’d been looking forward to Blissdom. I have been on Twitter for about three years now, and have been talking with many of the attendees for almost that whole time. I was excited to finally talk to them in person. Yet when I saw them, if I sensed even the slightest hesitation, I was once again the quiet little girl sitting reading a book under the tree outside during recess, told off by the vice-principal because I wasn’t running around with the other kids.
I should clarify that this had absolutely NOTHING to do with the people there; it was simply that I was out of my comfort zone. Put me in a small car, with four other strangers, and I can have a blast, and win a Road Rally. Put me in a club filled with loud music, and people so close that you have to nudge your way through crowds to get anywhere, and I’m edgy, uncomfortable, and awkward.
That brings me back to Susan Cain’s point: that’s okay. Those of us who need time alone to recharge our batteries, who need time to think things through before speaking, and who would rather curl up with a good book than dance ‘til dawn are in good company, with the likes of JK Rowling, Warren Buffett, and Albert Einstein. We may not be the “leaders” in the traditional North American sense, but we are the thinkers, and the creators. Where would the world be without us?
But until our society begins to place more value on its introverts, I will continue to force myself out of my comfort zone, and perhaps eventually I’ll find out that “fake it ‘til you make it” really does work.
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