The Introvert Feeling

 When I was a little boy my mother took me to some sort of party at school that I suppose was meant to help the children get to know one another. For some reason, I was just an unusually shy kid and I remember sitting in a row of chairs lined up against the wall and refusing to get up and talk to anyone. My mother is sitting beside me and urging me to get up and mingle. The feeling I have is fear.

I'm not even sure that this is an actual memory or maybe just a dream I once had. I seem to remember there was dancing, but then again that seems unlikely for a school event for kids that young (I think I was maybe 6). If there was dancing, that would have scared me half to death! The other feeling I associate with this memory, besides fear, is stubborn refusal. The feeling that lies behind the adamant "I won't."

In any case, that memory is in many ways the story of my life (or at least a part of it). I have spent a good deal of time sitting on the side and feeling pressured to do what I didn't want to do, and in my mind saying, "No, I won't. They can't make me."  I learned in time to be a lot more sociable, but not until adulthood and well along in adulthood at that. Now I can mingle, I can chatter pleasantries and guffaw at people's jokes (but the thought of dancing still prompts that same set of feelings).

These are the things introverts feel. Fear, stubborn refusal, and then later disappointment in ourselves (partly because we suspect that we missed something special). It's tiring, and I'm largely over it now, by the grace of God. But that's what I'm thinking about this morning.