An Unplanned Thought

As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, I’ve moved around a lot, not just to and fro from different locations but cultures and experiences as well. These experiences have shaped me, I’ve become a very task-oriented person and need to remind myself to not be so serious when my schedule becomes busy. I take a lot more time to make even simple decisions because of my frustration with having to deal with avoidable mistakes, a trait I picked up in China when I’ve ordered the wrong dish of food and ended up with chicken feet or the slight drop off in tone of an address and ending up half the city away in the opposite direction by my taxi driver. I guess one of the biggest ways I’ve been shaped is my revelation of how introverted I am.

This is not to say that I have no extravert tendencies within me, for I still have a few, but in recent years I’ve come to know myself as needing time spent on my own to be more frequent. Now as I’ve moved from place to place, both my introverted tendencies and my extraverted tendencies will fight against each other, one yearning to belong and be part of a social group and the other yearning for the ease and peace which exists when you’re not around people all of the time. The latter yearning wins every time. Although a healthy balance can be found between satisfying both extraversion and introversion, well, I’ve always been terrible at multi-tasking and I’ve had enough long term change in my life, the switch from extraversion and introversion on a daily basis seems too much for me.

Now I’ve realized that the way I’ve come to understand extraversion, from my experience, has that meaning of conformity to the group dynamic and ways of saying things. The group dynamic being an “Inner Ring” in my experience, somehow influencing the way I speak and act. I guess the influence of the “Inner Ring” is something which I’ve not found agreeable to me, finding that in those settings it’s hard for me to be truly myself, I prefer groups of two or three. In my mind, conformity to the group dynamic really has come to feel the way Lewis describes the way a man is changed by his pursuit of the inner ring:

“if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an ‘inner ringer." I don’t say you’ll be a successful one; that’s as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in- one way or the other you will be that kind of man.”

However, I also know that I do need to find good and meaningful relationships with people that I like for I still need some sort of inner ring, a small one, but still an inner ring. Lewis reminds me of this important point when he writes:

“And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside.”

I know that I must find a healthy balance between my extravert and introvert tendencies. We should never lean too far in either direction.