This column originally ran in early February 2012. The Time magazine article is still available (see link below), but the accompanying quiz no longer works. Not surprisingly, I'm still an introvert, as a recent quasi-panic attack reminded me.
The article by Bryan Walsh begins with the author’s story of hiding in the bathroom of the American Embassy in Tokyo, where he works up courage to later mingle with the powerful elite at a holiday party. It proceeds to explain how introverted people, often labelled (sometimes erroneously) as “shy,” are a product of both nature and nurture. In other words, their disposition toward large crowds is determined by genetics and environment.
I nodded my head in recognition so often while reading Walsh’s piece that I reminded myself of one of those dunking-bird toys that perpetually dips beak into water before swinging up again, propelled by a liquid counterweight in its bottom. When Walsh describes the exhaustion that introverted people often feel at social gatherings, I bobbed my head in agreement. When he talks about the introvert’s preference for working alone, I nodded again. When he noted that “introvert” need not be a synonym for “shy,” I was practically salaaming before the magazine and shouting “Amen,” despite the religious mixed metaphor, because it so perfectly dovetailed with my personality.
I answered yes to 19 out of 20 questions on an accompanying quiz, agreeing emphatically with statements such as, “I prefer not to show my work or discuss it with others until it is finished,” “I dislike conflict” and “If I had to choose, I’d prefer a weekend with absolutely nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled.” Along the introvert/extrovert continuum, I’m siding with the quiet folks.
The only statement that drew a “No” is this: “People describe me as soft-spoken or mellow.” And that, in perpetuity, has been the crux of my inner personality debate.
People who know me from my schooldays would likely remember me as a clown, if they remember me at all. I fancied myself the wiseacre in the back of the room, king of the quick quip or double-entendre, the guy who knew just how far to push without angering an instructor. “Shy” and “introverted” probably aren’t the first adjectives that come to mind, for instance, when people recall my humiliating performance as Quasimodo during a report for a book I didn’t read. (I moaned like an animal for two minutes, pretending I was the hunchback being whipped by the evil Claude Frollo.)
Yet outside of classroom situations that were my comfort zone, I was -- and am -- painfully introverted. I never attended a school dance. I never tried out for a sports team. I have never directly asked anybody out on a date. (My wife asked me.) My sales career ended when I found it too painful to continue risking daily rejection by strangers, when I literally could not cold-call anymore.
To this day, I feel anxiety when entering wedding receptions, calling hours, or speaking in a crowd. Rarely do I make a telephone call where I wouldn’t rather hang up before it is answered. If I can email or text instead, I do.
Oddly enough, however, I make my living as a teacher, standing in front of a room of strangers every August and hoping that my knocking knees and shaking hands aren’t too obvious. Each day, I attempt to win over students with corny jokes, a toothy grin and a carnival barker’s persona. If I’m overly tired, these tools fail me, and all I’m left with is the Real Me, who’d much rather sit in the back of the room and pretend to listen while hiding a Mad Magazine inside my textbook.
By the time Friday rolls around, all this extroversion leaves me with just enough energy to crawl back into my cave, pull shut the front door and hide inside a book or a movie with some take-out food before I pull on my extrovert’s mask again on Monday.
Even this split-personality, which for most of my adult life I have considered patently bizarre, is explained by Walsh’s article. Brian Little, a Harvard lecturer and researcher, calls it the Free Trait Theory, which Walsh defines as “the idea that while we have certain fixed bits of personality, we can act out of character in the service of core personal goals.”
For me, that personal goal is making people laugh. I was good at it in the back of the room, I fancy myself as competent at it here in print, and I like to think I’ve developed a penchant for it in front of people, as well.
Because I firmly believe that when people are laughing, with me or at me, they are more open to new opportunities and ideas. That they learn better. And teaching, while I would prefer to do it in the privacy of my own home and from behind the safe anonymity of a computer screen, is a noble-enough calling to force me outside my comfort zone.
It’s what keeps me from living inside my shell 24/7 like a hermit crab and sends me out into the world each morning, mingling when I’d rather be retreating and speaking when I’d rather be listening.
At least now I know why.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com or @cschillig on Twitter
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