Hope for the hopelessly shy
This is the worst time to be an introvert. The world is ruled by bluster, noise, populism and whatever the hell Taylor Swift is doing lately that is getting everyone so angry. To be quiet, sensitive and shy is to be rendered irrelevant in this age of grandstanding. I’m sure our elders didn’t know that it would be turned upside down by overconfident men (mostly men). They couldn’t possibly have foreseen the same assertiveness they extolled revitalizing racism or justifying daily murders. They couldn’t have envisioned a future corrupted by self-assuredness, bravado, or cocksure recklessness. These are the same people, after all, who believed that the meek shall inherit the earth.
I have always been terribly shy. It’s a problem that hounded me in grade school, where the prospect of reciting a poem in class made me cry so much that I couldn’t memorize it anymore, and it’s a problem I still deal with today. I fight nervousness during presentations or when having to meet new people. When I was a kid, my parents always told me to believe in myself whenever they saw me shrinking in the moment. I didn’t understand what that meant at the time. I already had belief in myself, I thought. It wasn’t like I hated myself; I was too young for thoughts like that and Nirvana hadn’t released “Nevermind” yet. What I hated was the glare of others. And I couldn’t really understand why.
There are so many things I know now that I wish I knew then. Shyness, as psychologists have pointed out, isn’t necessarily the result of low self-esteem, but rather of a crippling fear of embarrassment. There’s a world of difference between the two: the former is inward and more deep-seated, while the latter is outward and often imaginary. That is why shyness isn’t an exclusively introverted trait. Extroverts get their energy from interacting with other people but this does not make them impervious to shame.
But introverts are the ones more prone to shyness. They do not rely on the outside world for energy and thus feel less compelled to overcome their fear of embarrassment. As a kid, I didn’t know that’s what shyness was, that the key was just growing immune to being stared at or laughed at. So as a teen I started thinking that maybe there was something wrong with me. Maybe I hated myself after all. On a related note: Nirvana released “Nevermind” around that time.
I don’t hate myself anymore, at least not more than any regular self-aware person does. And I do understand myself better now. I now know that being introverted world does persist, we just need to find our niche amid the loud voices. Maybe this is the perfect time to be an introvert after all. Maybe shyness holds more value in an increasingly brazen world.
I feel like I’m in a position to give useful advice to all shy kids out there, as an extremely shy person who has accomplished some modicum of success. I mean, I’m obviously not a big achiever, but I’m also not an abject failure. I am gainfully employed and I have achieved my childhood dream of becoming a published writer.
Here’s my advice: find that thing that you like about yourself. It’s there, even