The Clashing of ‘Verts

Is the introvert/extrovert craze doing more harm than good?

Much to the chagrin of those who might see themselves as one, introverts are having a moment. You can barely open a social media account these days without being lambasted by some sort of introvert meme detailing why we want to be in bed by 9 p.m., a glass of chardonnay and a good book ALONE is just peachy and doggonit, making friend is just exhausting. These pronouncements are typically followed by a cavalcade of comments confirming the truthiness of the stated position. By all accounts, we’re all introverts, thank you COVID.

And maybe we are, but that just can’t be true.

It got me thinking about this a little deeper. I would consider myself an introvert but hold on, am I? I love singing, dancing, performing, being with groups of people (even if I am exhausted afterwards). Yet, a number of these things both literally and figuratively got beaten out of me at a young age that marched continuously into early adulthood. The more I let myself wonder on this thought, the more I realized that calling myself an introvert really wasn’t accurate, but I don’t have the language to correctly describe what I am. Do we need it?

If I let it, these words could quickly become a diatribe on society beating out the creative spirit and wildly “different” different of its young boys (children if I’m being real). I can’t help but think that in some distant age, perhaps this was a survival mechanism for the tribe/pack/clan – in order for us to make it, men HAVE to do this and women HAVE to do this, there will be no deviating from the norm We could examine the deeply flawed logic of that further, but for the point of this, I’ll stop there.

We’re all just beautifully weird humans and these labels don’t do a whole lot to actually help or even describe us; they’re more limiting than liberating. But there is something to ponder here, I left a lot of things behind because I felt the immense pressure growing up of doing something of value.

Value is supremely subjective; in my day it was code for something that makes money and can support a family. Did I want a family? What did a life separate from my parents look like? Hell, at eighteen I wanted nothing more than to join the circus and see the world, be a music producer or act on some stage (I wasn’t even looking for Broadway, just performing). What did I do? I joined the Marine Corps, for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is there was no way I could be gay (I graduated high school in 1992 back when this was a thing we thought we had to be worried about). The Marine Corps wasn’t weird, the Marine Corps wasn’t creative, the Marine Corps checked all the boxes that culture had told me I needed to check because at the time college seemed MORE of a soul crushing endeavor.

Back to the ‘verts. You ever watch a young child? A few of them may express some shyness but by and large they are all in on most things. They want to play with their new best friend (who they just met five minutes ago). They want to show you the elaborate fashion show they just developed, or some new trick they just learned or dance move or song they just wrote. They are full throttle, grab life by the horns all in. What we would call extroverts. I’m not charting any new territory here, but maybe we should really consider why then they become introverts. Why is the process of becoming an adult so ready to strip everything about these little humans that makes them so wonderful. Why have we created this world? We’re not tribes anymore, we don’t need the men to hunt and the women to forage for survival. What purpose is this serving us anymore?

I watch my beautiful, six-year-old twin boys interact with the world and my heart breaks knowing that everything that makes them quirky and wonderful and interesting, society is going to do EVERYTHING it can to strip that away from them.

It starts by telling them they’re an introvert or an extrovert.