Saturday, August 10, 2013

Listening to QUIET on my iPod



Seems like a contradiction in terms!  I'm only up to Chapter 3, but I find it pretty interesting.

I've known that I am an introvert for most of my life.  Some of it I have attributed to being an "only child" of older parents back in the days when older parents didn't play with their children.  So I learned early on to entertain myself, and to make up stories about the families I drew, and the dolls with which I played.  What must it be like for a born extrovert to be an only child? 

After I joined the Daughters of Charity, at some point in the early 1980's most of us took the MBTI-
the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. I scored as an INFJ -  which very accurately described me.  But I also realized, on reflection, that my mother was an extroverted sensor and my father, an introverted thinker.  Opposites attract... and mutual insecurities attract too, I think.  I remember my mother berating my father many times for being "a hermit" and for not wanting to socialize -- for disappearing behind the newspaper or a book when they had company, which infuriated her.

I was more sociable in my younger years... now I find myself disappearing behind a book as my father did.

Anyway, this book was written by an introvert, and it spends a good amount of time delivering the fruits of the author's research on the topic of the value of introverts in what she calls a world of extroverts - the USA, anyway.  She really does a job on Harvard Business School, and its way of forming future business executives.

I'll have to keep reading to see what else she has to say.

In the meantime, here's an evocative piece of artwork - evocative for an introvert like me:

 Doorways of the Universe    by Midolluin:



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