Why the most introverted of us feel safe in the virtual world?
Quiet by Susan Cain is the holy grail book of introverts. Over the years I have heard people raving and criticising it in equal measures. I was a bit hesitant to pick this up as I didn't want any false idealism with respect to my own nature. My communication style has been kind of moody always and I am finding it extremely difficult to navigate in the corporate world as I strive for the leadership positions. So I thought it would be best to give this book a chance. I am yet to finish the book. So this is more of an introspective post to better understand some of the key points mentioned by Susan Cain.
Most of us have been working from home for almost 9 months. Even though some of my friends crave the social connection office is offering, I found myself loving the remote work option. I have always been a socially anxious person and the pressure of making conversations takes away a lot of energy which I would rather use it for my productivity. This is one of the biggest point for me.
It has always taken me years to forge meaningful relationships in real life. It is not easy for me to initiate a conversation in real life. I would prefer sitting alone with a book than to go and have a conversation with someone. So when I started using social media, it felt like a sanctuary. In social media platforms, we connect and have a conversation with someone because we already have some sort of idea about the person based on their interests. It doesnt mean that initiating the conversation is easy. It still takes an insane amount of courage. But still a bit better than the real world scenarios. I remember the first time I connected with someone over Twitter. I was jobless and most of my friends were busy with the beginning of their career. Twitter offered a wide range of friends with similar interests and principles. It is more than a decade now and I have to say I have got some amazing people in my life just because of that platform. Even though the Twitter has lost its charm over the years, we remain friends in real life. I usually think that if we ever met in real life before the Twitter conversation, we would have just ignored each other. Conversations wouldn't have been this spontaneous and interesting in real life at least for the introverts like us. In a way virtual world has saved us. Many of the friends that I made in real life are always envious of my pool of friends. They are mostly comfortable in real life conversations and never made any effort into exploring the social media platforms.
However it is also true that I was very young at that stage and was experimenting with the options available. As I grow older, I am a bit hesitant to make new connections over the virtual world. It might be because maintaining relationships also takes some amount of effort. I feel when we are really happy with the people in our lives, we rarely reach out to make new connections unless it is absolutely necessary.
