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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Introvert? Extrovert? Radical Follower of Islam?

well. maybe. but it doesn't really matter except in how I am going about the understanding of my self-identity.  Not a Muslim, only occasionally a radical and that has to do primarily with an old-school new england backtotheland movement in my heart and in my compost bucket. Can be an extrovert when it comes to flirtation. Men are my playthings, or were, when I was playing that game.
     I've always considered myself an introvert, plus a shy girl.  Its hard for me to break out of my 'space' and talk to strangers, for instance, having a great deal of difficulty going into a store to ask for help, being shy of the worker...
 I CAN do it, I certainly have and having kids has made my skin a whole lot tougher in terms of doing what is necessary to get around in the world.  I don't really want them to have this sort of shyness.  I know it, totally crazed.
but true, nonetheless. I really and truly don't like it, the whole talking to strangers thing.  I'm not generally insecure about myself but I just make a LOT of assumptions about the greater worth of other people, their time, their pathway, their lives, etc. and so I move aside to let them be their greater worth.  dig?

Anywho. the reason for bringing it up is ChakraCarol.  !*!  She questioned me about that aspect of my self-identity, saying something like:  If you are such an introvert, why are you so lonely?

oh.
well.

and what it has caused me to reassess is not actually that I might be an extrovert, but that I might not really be that lonely.  go figure. Of course, I would love to know lots of dynamic woman friends and I'd even take a few men to my side in a pinch :) but I wouldn't want them all at once and I certainly don't want to be part of a crowd anytime soon.  SO there is that.

And I'm also reassessing my need/desire for feedback all the time.  I like to be challenged to think in a new way, to add a new facet to the complexity ... but it doesn't need to undo me to be comment-free (here) or introverted (also, here, but different.)  Its like word choice, the weight is in the voice, the meaning in the vibrations of the larynx ... and so, wanting the challenge of conversation is not the desparate loneliness that I had identified, the meaning is in the thinking, the process, the 'connection' with another.

AND, as I get older and older, I have to reinvestigate why and where I decided to move aside all the time for the 'greater worth' of everyone else.  Its a sort of highschool -junior high mentality that I just never fully shook, the popular kids now encompassing the entire world, instead of just the few in school.  I have a lot of belief system which tells me bigger truths about people, about equality and oneness and grace and the wild spread of humanity that there is, so why in my moments of weakness is it always this that I slip back to?

so, i'm not saying i've decided i'm not lonely or that I don't need friends or that the ones I have are where I'm stopping or that I'm never going to get directions at a gas station, because I haven't 'decided' anything. I'm just plucking away at my strings here. 
sort of banjo-y at the moment. 
heh.

2 comments:

Nancy said...

I hear you. Now tell me what I do with all of these people around me. These people that flock around filling up my time and my space...but in their presence, I am still lonely. I can work on ME, but what do I do with them?

Kate Hall said...

you know this, N.... legend has it that when we are all filled up with love for ourselves, it spills over and over and we'll find our peace with everyone else, wherever they are in their journey.
so i've been told, so I'd really really like to aim for... :)