Inscrutable as a Puppy Dog

I ran across this rather old piece about introverts. I find it terribly amusing, even though I'm one of the group getting burned. Jonathan Rauch, the author, says, "Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone." :-o Guilty as charged. More:

Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.

Oh, come ON. Introverts haven't cornered the market on complexity. I won't pretend to have figured out introverts, but extroverts aren't always what they tell you, either. I may be an open book, but a lot of inward drafting, review, and revision occurs before I go to press, heh.



Via a subsidiary of This Woman's Work.