In or Out

For the last few days, I've been having a discussion with a friend about personality types. This friend claims, "I used to be an introvert," as if it was something negative, and then goes on to say that life-changing [positive] events turned him into an extrovert. His definition of introverts bothered me, because he described himself (as a "former introvert") as anti-social, painfully shy, people-hating, and other equally unbecoming adjectives. 

Upon further probing, I discovered that he had been repressed as a child and was not allowed to express his friendliness and caring by his overbearing and punitive father. He therefore became withdrawn and didn't seek out interactions with others. When he was finally away from his birth family, he had a spiritual experience that tore away the fetters and allowed what I believe was his true personality to shine forth.

I have been trying to tell this friend that introversion is not what he describes at all. Not every introvert is socially awkward or phobic. Not every introvert is antisocial or hates people. Not every introvert is shy. (He still uses those adjectives interchangeably with introverted.)

In fact, these qualities are probably quite well shared among both major personality types, just expressed in a different way. For example, a lot of extroverts are quite insecure on the inside - but instead of withdrawing, they tend to put on a smiling, brave face and often overcompensate by being extra-driven, extra-talkative, and/or extra-friendly.

Photo "Teenage Girls Gossiping" by
Ambro at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Most statistics will tell you that the introvert and extrovert population is just about evenly split. I tend to believe that the introvert population is under-reported (in other words, that there are many more introverts around than there are extroverts) because most introverts KNOW that they are introverts whereas most extroverts have no idea that they are extroverts, and they are therefore more likely to take a "personality types" questionnaire to find out what their type is. I can't count the number of times someone has said to me right before those ever-popular Myers-Briggs or Jungian exercises, "What major personality type do YOU think I am? I just can't figure it out..." Invariably that person is an extrovert (and not just borderline either. Extremely so!!)

Here is the ONLY basic difference between introverts and extroverts: where does the person get his or her energy? 

That's it. That's the whole difference. 

Extroverts are energized by being around other people; they need others like every animal needs oxygen to survive. Their orientation is "Out." Without social interaction, they become irritable, moody, sometimes depressed. Introverts are energized by being alone OR in the company of one (or at the most two) close and trusted friends. Their orientation is "In." Without their daily dose of quiet time, they become just as irritable, and can become depressed or morose. 

No one type is better than the other. That is not what is commonly believed, however. By both "sides."

That is the illusion - that is the misconception passed along by the media and by those with power over others. In fact, many times those with power over others are extroverts. Their extroverted nature naturally predisposes them to rise in popularity and they often find favor in the eyes of those who are looking to promote from within.  And many extroverts, unfortunately, see introverted people as a threat.  Introverted people see the impulsive nature of the extrovert as a dangerous thing, and want to put on the brakes when they see things starting to spiral out of control. In typical reactionary style, they see the extrovert as the threat.

There are many reasons for this. 

An introverted person's tendency to think, to ponder detail, to look at all sides, and to be cautious can be seen by extroverts as being "a wet blanket." His need for quiet time can be seen as being a "party pooper." His reticence to speak up at meetings (a common thing among introverts) can be mistaken for a lack of interest or involvement. 

An extroverted person's tendency to speak out with new ideas - to "think out loud" so to speak, can be seen by an introverted person as brash and controlling. The introvert can view the extrovert's constant socializing as scatterbrained or even lazy in a "grasshopper versus ant" way. 

Each group considers itself to be "In" and the other group "Out" - we versus they, dividing walls getting thicker and thicker. Bullying is common between the two groups. So is manipulation. 

It's so sad. So unnecessary. So junior high school.

In actual fact, the conversation that the extrovert has with himself out loud when facing a decision is the same conversation that the introvert has within himself. It's just that the introvert prefers to be right the first time he dares open his mouth, not wanting to appear "dumb." The extrovert sees that hesitancy as 'not being a team player' and often jumps to another topic - or gets obvious and repeatedly asks for a response - when there's no feedback (extroverts LOVE feedback. Instant and continuous feedback.) Introverts usually don't give feedback until they've processed the entire ball of wax, and many times their reaction is better "felt" than "telt." In other words, a statement or an idea can impact an introvert deeply without a word being spoken in response. It doesn't mean that the introvert is any less affected by it. He's just pondering the implications.

The extrovert, on the other hand, likes to 'bounce ideas' off others and in so doing, help to clarify his thinking; it never crosses his mind that the first thing out of his mouth is going to be the final result. Introverts see that as insincere and shallow. But it isn't. It's just the way extroverts process the world around them. It's just different. Not worse, not superior. Not inferior. Different. An extrovert's mentality is that if he likes something, then everyone likes it. So when he says, "Come on, it'll be fun," he really means it will be fun for him, and since everyone is just like him, everyone will think it's fun. He can't understand why it wouldn't be. So to an introvert, his encouragements to engage in whatever activity it is, appear to be just so much bullying (- and, don't get me wrong, when it turns into insistence in spite of protests, it IS bullying -) when usually what is the case is that it's a way for him to share his excitement and enthusiasm. 

I lived with an extreme extrovert for nearly 21 years. She was the only extrovert in our household, and I can say from experience that she felt insecure, out of place, unaccepted, and "strange" or "defective" in our house just as much as an introvert raised by extroverts would feel. But there was nothing strange or defective about her. She was just different. We came to appreciate her energy, her zest for life, her zany antics when things just got "too quiet." And she in turn came to appreciate our steadiness, our depth of feeling, and our analytical abilities when she faced a decision she really didn't know how to work through on her own. 

And there is one more thing that I must mention. Just because a person is an extrovert or an introvert doesn't mean that he or she doesn't have some of the qualities of the opposite at the exact same time. People are incredibly complex beings, and no two personalities are exactly alike. People are who they are ... and that's a good thing. It means endless variety, endless challenge, endless adventure to life. To dismiss one or the other or say that it is wrong or somehow defective or sick, is to deny one of the most important things we humans value about our humanity: individuality. If everyone were the same, it would be an unbelievably boring existence, wouldn't it?

How about putting aside excluding or judging others on the basis of our differences and leaving it "Out" of the picture, where it belongs??  How about adopting the idea that we're ALL, every one of us, in the "In" group - - all of us, no exclusions?? How about that?? 

Because after all, we're all "In" this together....

If it feels good

"If it feels good," goes the old saying from decades ago, "do it."

Hm.  I remember sermons about the evils of that saying, calling it hedonistic, condoning the love of pleasure rather than of God.  But I think it's all in how you take it.  

Perhaps it's better with a qualifier.  As long as it doesn't disrespect yourself, as long as it has a consequence that builds you up and doesn't eventually destroy you spiritually, physically, or emotionally, you might want to consider the idea that it's a good thing.  

I know people - and I am one of them a lot of times - who stay in unhealthy situations and/or relationships far too long and don't stand up for themselves or don't walk away out of fear of what the other person or people involved might think. Some of those same people are afraid to enter what could be healthy situations or relationships out of fear of being rejected, not fitting in, or just out of habit.  "It's always been this way."  

Sometimes we can get in a rut, you know?  Doing the same things, watching the same TV shows, hanging out with the same people, having the same arguments (er, um, intense discussions).  We spin our wheels and don't allow ourselves to do what feels good for us  -  some call this "novel" idea "self-care!" 

This cool photo was one I found at discoverfrance

Maybe we think that doing something for ourselves is a sign that we're selfish people (or not selfless people).  But it's been my experience that if I don't look after myself, I suffer in the long run.  I become depleted, I run on empty, I run out of emotional gas, I don't have anything left to give yet I insist on continuing to give because it's expected of me - and that's the place where resentment, bitterness, and depression breed.  I know. That's where I lived for decades.  

There's a word that's really popular in evangelical Christian circles - stewardship.  Most people think of that as taking care of the things and people with which or with whom God has entrusted you: family, friends, job, finances, time.  Interesting that "yourself" is not listed - not even thought of.  But God has also given us our selves - and not taking care of ourselves is just as irresponsible as not taking care of our loved ones.  It's like we're taking this huge untapped asset and burying it in the dirt because we're afraid of taking a risk on it.  We've undervalued it.  And someday we may be called to give an account of that.

We need to know in our innermost being that we have value.  Not to others, that's not what I mean.  So many people get their sense of worth from other people and wonder why relationships either are impossible to maintain or unattainable in the first place. It's because the focus is backward.  The primary relationship is with the self.  If we are not comfortable in our own skin, nobody else will enjoy being with us.  Enjoying our own company is the first step to healthy and fulfilling relationships with others.  We can't do that by forcing ourselves to take last place all the time and be miserable as a result.

Taking the time that it takes to nurture ourselves is going to pay off in so many other ways.  Taking risks, learning something new, growing in some way that enhances our selves, this is time well spent and will pay dividends we never imagined.  

What's stopping us from taking those risks?  Today is a great day to start.  If it feels good, if it will build us up and not hurt us in the long run, then let's do it!

Bah humbug - really?

What's the first thing you think of when I say the name, "Scrooge"? 

I'll bet it isn't the 'after' picture.  It's probably the 'before' picture. Which is weird because it's the story of how someone changed from the before to the after. You'd think the after picture would be the one that stuck.  Hm. I think that the "after" picture was the one Dickens originally wanted to leave with people.

My all-time favorite film rendition of his famous short story, "A Christmas Carol"  is the one which stars Patrick Stewart, produced in 1999. Mr. Stewart did a far better job of projecting the inner anguish of the man - and the inevitable gratitude and joy - than anyone I've ever seen portray the character.  

Image found through Google at :
http://southernchristmascarol.blogspot.com/2009/01/
fred-nephew-good-ol-boy.html

Although I love the "after" picture that Dickens paints of his famous character, I still hesitate to call anyone "Scrooge."  It conjures up - for most people - a mean-spiritedness that overshadows and poisons interactions with others in a way that frustrates even the best efforts to include the person.  Yet the story of Scrooge delves into the reasons for his sour disposition.  Life had not been kind to him so he was not kind in return.

I must admit that a lot of the time I tend to avoid all the interactions and festivities that go on at this time of year, and I'm sure that some people think that I'm a "Scrooge".  In some ways I guess I am.  I'm not sure if it has to do with my own introverted nature (probably a lot of it right there) or just that I've seen so much that goes on in the name of "Christmas spirit" which - to me - just isn't.  

Loneliness dogs my steps at this time of year, something like a hungry wolf who isn't just satisfied with the rodents he finds along the trail but is after bigger game: me.  Sometimes I wonder why I even go to the trouble of decorating and going to social functions.  If I go, I feel out of place, excluded.  I probably am not, but that's my perception. Even in a crowd, I can relate a lot to the child Scrooge, being left behind when his school mates were off to spend Christmas break with their families - feeling like he didn't have anywhere he felt accepted.  Many times I've felt like that.  Sometimes I've even wanted to check out.  Especially when I have been reminded of just how alone I am, how people just tolerate me and don't "get" me at all.  

It is a short step from that perception of non-acceptance, that feeling of utter misery, to putting a hard crust over my heart and not letting anyone in ... so as to avoid being more hurt.  Probably I have already done that in some ways. 

Some days are better than others.  I'm up, I'm optimistic, I'm ready to face the world.  Life is good.

Some days, however, it takes all I have just to get out of bed and face the great gaping black hole of not fitting in anywhere.  I feel that I don't fit in at work - there I'm "too religious." Or just "too weird."  I don't fit in at church because there, I'm not "religious enough." Or just "too weird."  On such days, I cling by my fingernails to the slogan, 'one day at a time' because if I think about the abyss of endless days looming in front of me, I could easily fall into it and lose myself in despair.  

At such times, the festivities and the usual chit-chat only serve to highlight for me how "apart" I feel.  And I can fully understand why the highest rates of suicides are at Christmas-time. The crowded streets, the even more crowded stores, and all the talk about family get-togethers and parties and so forth, all serve to heighten my misery.  There's nothing wrong with parties, family get-togethers, and all the festivities this season has to offer.  It's just that when a person doesn't feel accepted or appreciated, maybe not even loved, the last thing he or she wants to attend is another social function that highlights how excluded he or she feels.  It doesn't mean that the person is anti-social or that he or she hates Christmas.  I happen to like Christmas - just not all the frenetic activity surrounding it (or any other family-oriented holiday going), the pushing people around in stores (jostling elbows and people saying "excuse me" all the time - which, after the 100th time I've heard it, sounds more like "move your fat rear" than "I need to get past you.")  That, combined with the social expectations, the family obligations, and so forth, tend to make me want to do my Christmas shopping online and vastly limit my social and family obligations.  Most folks call that a clear-cut case of 'bah humbug.'  .... I kind of don't. 

I prefer, instead, to rid myself of what drives me crazy about all the crowds and so forth, to dissociate myself from the idea - however accepted it may be - of reciprocity (you give me something so now, I'm obligated to give you something) and of one-upmanship (Aunt Sue had us to her place last year and she had a sumptuous feast; we have to outdo her this year at our place), and instead take a trip in my mind to a dripping cave in a hillside in Middle-Eastern springtime to visit a little baby.  His mom has wrapped him tightly in strips of cloth like a mummy is wrapped, and placed him into a hollowed out rock (nothing wooden in that place except perhaps the pitchfork to toss hay into the rock manger).  That humble scene brings home to me the wonder of the distance God traveled in order to become one of us - all for love.  Not that we loved Him, or that we even COULD - but that He loved us first.

When I focus on that  -  I remember that there is definitely something worthwhile to celebrate.

Nativity Debunked

When I was a child, my mom had this little chintzy nativity scene that showed Joseph and  Mary beaming down on Jesus, who was beaming blissfully lying scantily draped with cloths in strategic places, on His back in a wooden manger.  The whole scene was bathed in the glow of a comet-like star, shining upon the inside of a wooden barn with a thatch roof.  It was replete with the requisite camel, donkey, cow and sheep, and adorned by richly clad shepherds and angels and wise men, oh my.

Bunk.  No halos.  No music. No glamour.

Historians paint a different picture of the "stable" in which Jesus was born, and the Bible leaves clues that fill in the rest of the story.

The stable was not in a barn.  It was in a cave.  People who had cows in that region often kept them in nearby caves away from any rain that might fall and where they would be easy to corner and milk in the morning.  

Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes.  These were strips of cloth that were tightly wrapped around the child's entire body with only his head sticking out. They did this to make sure his arms and legs grew straight; it was a common belief (probably fueled by the incidence of rickets).   The manger was not made of wood.  It was most likely a hollowed-out boulder.  When Jesus was wrapped in the swaddling bands and placed in that manger, it looked like He was prepared for burial... a mummy in a tomb.

The shepherds only looked after the sheep in the hills outside Bethlehem in the few months prior to Passover.  It was their job to watch over the Passover lambs, not only for the feast but also to watch for the one lamb that would be the sacrifice that year: perfect, with no blemishes.  Shepherds were considered the riff-raff of society.  They lived in the outdoors and would most certainly not have had clean clothes or smelled like a rose either.  Not likely anyone trusted them; after all, they were paid out of the temple treasury.  

Their arrival at the stable might have caused some concern to Joseph and Mary as they saw them approach.  As they heard the remarkable story of angels shouting the praises of God in the skies outside the town, and of the sign they were told to look for - their fears subsided.  

The wise men (and nowhere does it say there were only three; in fact, there were probably so many of them that their procession caused no small stir in Jerusalem when they arrived and asked to see the newborn King) did not show up that night.  In fact, it was over a year before they showed up.  The star that led them there had shown up in the far east - and they knew to go to Israel.  Naturally they assumed that it would be the capital where they would find the Child.  We know that they took over a year to get to Jerusalem because of Herod's reaction when he asked them what time the star appeared and then, when they didn't show up to report on Jesus' whereabouts, he had every child under the age of two years old killed.  

Talk about paranoid.  He was well known for being afraid of being knifed in his sleep or poisoned by members of his own family. He was very serious about any threat to his "throne".

No, by the time the sages gave their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the little family was living in a house in Bethlehem, no longer in a stable (after all, the census was done and the population of Bethlehem had gone back to normal).  Scripture tells us that when the magi got to the house (not the stable) where He was staying, they gave their gifts.  

These lavish gifts would hold them in good stead in Egypt, for what good would the skills of a carpenter do in Egypt, where the only trade that paid anything at all was that of stone-mason?

Two or three years in Egypt.  And when the time came for them to return to Israel, they finally returned to Nazareth, with Jesus and probably at least one younger sibling in tow.  And Nazarene tongues which wagged six years previous started wagging all over again.  We might be tempted to think of the nativity and the early life of Jesus as somehow sheltered, protected, with angels "ahh-ing" all over the place.  But Jesus and His family knew poverty, pain, persecution, and peril from the word go.

God saw fit to allow it ... so that He could relate to our pain and rejection, our hardships, our feelings ... as one of us. 

Tears are a language

The double-standard is shocking.

Women feel overcome with emotion - and nobody thinks twice about them shedding tears.

But let a man do it and eyebrows raise. Some of the most insensitive, thoughtless comments have come out of people who saw a man cry in a situation in which it was entirely appropriate for him to do so.

"Straighten up."
"Be a man."
"Get a hold of yourself."

Personally I believe that (just as a woman is never more feminine than when she cries real tears) a man is never more masculine than when he dares brave the social norms of today's western culture and shows his emotions. He's demonstrating to those around him that he is comfortable enough in his own skin to be honest about how he feels inside of it.

I'm not talking about crocodile tears here. I'm talking about real, gut-wrenching emotion.

It's a powerful thing. Emotion is not wrong. In fact, it can be the most right thing in the world: a catalyst for change, even. Think how many people were moved with compassion when the earthquake hit Haïti in January 2010.

Emotions were designed to be transient, temporary states of mind. The feelings of fear and anger are warning flags that something is wrong - and expressing emotion (whether in joy, sadness, anger, pain, or fear) relieves stress and helps our bodies achieve equilibrium. They signal to us what things are the most important to us. They connect us with our dreams, with our passions, with our callings. They tell us when a boundary has been crossed - or if a wrong needs to be righted. They keep us stable - as long as they are allowed to touch us as they pass through our spirits.

Since God created us in His image - all of us - and He feels things deeply, it only stands to reason that we would do so as well. It is healthy and good to experience emotion and be able to express that.

It's what we do with our own emotions that can enrich or stifle our lives. Stuffing emotional pain down inside of us and not letting it out - or holding onto it long-term without dealing with why - only builds up internal pressure and leads to physical sickness: high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, kidney problems and so forth.

If those strong emotions are directed at God - and let's admit it: sometimes we get mad at Him - He can take it if we want to vent at Him. "He's got broad shoulders," my mom used to say of certain people when I was growing up. I think that applies to God too. He "desires truth in the innermost parts." And He loves us through all of it.

If the emotions are directed at someone else - that's okay too. We can take them to God and tell Him the truth - "Hey God, I can't deal with that $U^%$^ person who hurt me (or who hurt someone I love) - I want to forgive him/her because I want to do what You've asked me to do - but I can't. This is what he/she did ..." and then pour it all out, cry, scream, rant, rave - whatever it takes. He'll hold us in His arms and let us do all of that, and still love us. That's actually the beginning of the healing process, the first step toward forgiveness.

But until we are honest with Him and with ourselves, healing can never start to take place. The tears we shed are precious to Him - they speak volumes heavenward like spoken words could never do - and God understands that language.