Amit points us to this brilliant article by Jonathan Rauch, a complete WOW-WOW-WOW material (as I had put it here in a fellow-introvert's post on the same :P) that left me with a very strong connection, absolute delight, and an immediate thrust to read it all over again and muse over it. Do read; and read over again. Also, read this interview. Oh, thanks so much Amit.
I know. My name is Zero, and I am an introvert; irrefutably so. I guess everybody I acquainted all my life would vouch[1] for that. Though, eventually for some of them, the perception blurs out (perhaps, they were misled by the “more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined and more sensitive” persona) and they seem to think otherwise. But, I digress.
I was telling you that I was very much that thing, an introvert. Couple this with the extreme cynicism[2] that sits on my head and you will get a fair picture of how I stood holding[3] the much-coveted shield that we won during the all-important inter-departmental cultural festival back during my college days. Well if you weren’t imaginative enough (or couldn’t just connect to the introvert-in-a-party situation), I was holding it like how one would hold a bag stuffed with the day’s shopping (a little exaggerated actually, but you get the idea). Of course, I was much delighted. But, my idea of celebration wasn't doing gung-ho jumps or making loud victory gestures.
Here’s another extrovert-introvert write-up that I had read sometime back, which observed, among other things, that I won’t be a popular blogger; something which I knew pretty much myself. {Comrades alert: it does have some unsavory things to say about us like that we are “incapable of making [our] point and [we] would be at a disadvantage passing on the revolutionary new idea that [we] had” and things like that. (Note to self: From when did you start getting revolutionary ideas anyway?)}
[1] - I didn’t conduct any survey asking if I was an introvert or extrovert. (We will leave that to the “people persons”, shall we?) It’s a thing that you can easily know.
[2] - While Jonathan Rauch in his excellent piece decouples a lot of qualities from introversion, I want to know how well introversion and cynicism couple with each other.
[3] - It just so happened that I was the department team coordinator (by default and by default only; but still beats me how I did that!) as all others interested folks had something worthy to do, like actually participating in the events; and I did a little bit of participation too, but that was well-spaced between the moments of deep personal reflection.
