I am an introvert.
I say this with some kind of trepidation, because I know the world looks at us introverts with strange and sometimes unforgiving eyes. We do not always rise to the social standards held in common. We do not flash our big smiles, show off our success, our fancy cars and pretty girlfriends. We are a different group, sometimes ill-understood and disregarded, and as a result stick mostly to ourselves. Some call us nerds; in my case specifically, “computer nerd”, which is a label that is ill-fitting and hurting, and it tells me only that you do not care enough in getting to know me and find out who I really am.
It isn’t always easy to be an introvert. People wonder with amazement how I can spend so much time alone. And I’m probably a rather depressing sight at most parties, sitting with a silent, courteous smile on my lips as my eyes flicker bewilderingly, searching hopelessly for something interesting to come across my path…
It is, of course, a gliding scale. Some people are very extroverted people, some are very introverted, but most people tend to fall somewhere in between. Ultimately – and this may be a generalization, but, I think, a working one – it is a question of where you derive your energy from. Extroverted people enjoy social gatherings because they are energized by people. They get energy and strength from talking to people and socializing with them. Introverted people do not; they draw their strength from within, from their own thoughts, ideas, dreams and desires. To an introvert, socializing consumes power, and it needs to be regenerated, most likely by spending time away from people; once again retreating into that quiet, solitary place, where nothing stops you from the dreaming and exploration of inner worlds. I guess this is why we like to read books so much.
This is also why I like my job so much. I am a software developer; and designing software gives me a lot of time to sit down with thoughts and patterns, delving through ideas, pondering new designs and exploring that world of mathematical beauty I carry within myself. I am probably immensely boring sometimes (especially to extroverted people), but that is only because I go deep, so very deep, in my search for truth and meaning; much like a miner digging for gold or diamonds, thousands of feet below the surface.
Extroverts try to change the world, introverts seek to understand it.
This desire to understand and to know sometimes comes in conflict with the setting. My single biggest fear is a mingle party, where people casually glide around, chatting and doing small talk a whole evening. I could not imagine a more horrifying social context. Having to spend an entire evening, talking to people about amazingly unimportant things, and hearing the same stuff repeated a thousand times over (only in different wording), is to me the intellectual equivalent of assembling engine parts on a factory floor, five days a week, with no end in sight.
And it does get awkward when I try to talk to someone at these parties, because just as much as I derive my strength from my inner world, I also derive my interest from hearing about yours. So I care deeply about your feelings, your ideas and thoughts, how you see the world and the accumulated wisdom you have learned from your life. I care little for the things you like; but I care very much about what you love. It takes me a step deeper somehow, and I get to explore what makes you unique, and what sets you apart from everyone else here at this boring party. And suddenly it feels less like a party and more like a date; and that makes me nervous, should I have trodden unintentionally across a line somewhere between you and me, within this social context.
Most people don’t go this deep, and I don’t understand why. It is as though they like to flitter like butterflies across the surface, when amazing treasure, rich and glorious and plentiful, lie in abundance in the depths below.
So if I may hazard a guess, most people shrug me off as boring, which, in all earnest, I probably am — just another computer nerd, standing in the corner. Perhaps that is because just right then, I am strolling through fields and meadows of thought, between marble columns of ideas and dreams, under a starlit sky filled with everything that is possible … inside.
Chicago is a city I visited back in 1999. I found it to be a wonderful city, probably one of the cities I liked most throughout the U.S. In comparison with Gothenburg or Stockholm, Chicago finally feels like a really big city – the Chicago Metropolitan Area boasts of some 9.5 million inhabitants, which is more than the entire country of Sweden.
