Right from school, you’ll notice how it’s always the same type of people – if not the exact same ones – who are given the opportunities. Right from your early days, you’ll notice how people are more willing to invest in the marketability of a gregarious and vocal person over a reserved and reflective one.[break]
And growing up an introvert in a society like Nepal takes a whole new turn for the worse when people start assuming that quiet equates to stupid, quiet equates to soft and meek, quiet equates to someone who can be easily dominated.
Trust me, I know because I speak from experience.
As a kid, when I felt the all-too antagonizing stares of the elders burning holes in my body as they tried to analyze and pin me down for an introvert, I often wondered why. Just because I didn’t speak much didn’t mean that I was shy; rather, I enjoyed listening or reflecting. When I didn’t retort a witty line when someone passed a snide comment about me, it wasn’t because I didn’t know how to but merely because I saw no need to. When I preferred to stay in my room rather than go out, it wasn’t because I was asocial but it was because I just valued my space.
But boy! Did my approaches to life take a boomerang effect! Even before I had time to understand myself as an individual, I was labeled an introvert – someone coy, calm, and reclusive.
Illustration: Sworup Nhasiju
Eventually, in later years, I did encounter a phase in life where I lived up to everyone’s introverted stereotyped expectation of myself. This was unconscious, of course. Call it what you will, but I like to believe there was an element of self-fulfilling prophecy that occurred.
Lauren Aaronson writes about self-fulfilling prophecies in her article in Psychology Today, “Self-fulfilling prophecies—ideas that become reality simply because someone believes them—do not usually have strong effects. But a study shows that expectations may come to pass when many people hold the same beliefs—if those beliefs are unfavorable.”
It was like this eerie dream wherein I was becoming the person everyone I thought I was. And by default, I was falling victim to the sad and pitiful stereotype.
It was in these years I realized that bolneko pithopani bikchha, nabolneko chamalpani bikdaina. I understood that an outgoing person was much likely to receive the benefit of the doubt and assumed to be smart, effective, and productive. Going through a certain number of years as someone who preferred to keep to herself rather than be vocal about feelings, I understood how disadvantaged I had become in life.
While it’s a tempting thought to conclude that extroverts get all the good things in life, Warren Buffett, J.K. Rowling, Mahatma Gandhi stand as examples of how this isn’t the case. Figures like these have shown the world that being inclined to introversion doesn’t hinder one’s overall personality. They are exemplars of what author Susan Cain means when she writes in Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking.
Perhaps it’s this realization that propelled me to be more outgoing, or perhaps I was never really a truly introverted soul. But whatever the logic, I like to believe that there’s no such thing as a hundred percent introvert or extrovert – with all due respect to Carl Jung. We all have traces of both stereotypes: it just depends on the time and context whereby whichever one aspect shines through.
And I really hope that our society realizes this. I hope that no one has to go through life getting less than they deserve simply because the others are too oblivious to see the good in them.
In other words, introverts, extroverts or any other stereotypes: Let’s just be willing to accept that everyone has something worthwhile to offer.
The writer is student of Political Science at Thammasat University who enjoys exploring life and all that it has to offer.