In the beginning of this semester, for my religion course, we were forced to take the Myers Briggs personality exam. Feeling a lot like Beatrice Prior from Divergent, I was opposed I didn't believe in the test. I thought that knowing if I was introverted or extroverted wouldn't make a difference in my life because I knew who I was. Or so I thought.
My test labeled me as introverted. And I could see why. I am the type of person who cancels plans on people all the time because staying in is one of the ways I unwind. I love staying in and writing. Working alone is something I do the best. But introversion does not necessarily mean that you are a solitary soul. It means that you get your energy from within. Hanging out with people is a constant struggle because it feels like you are giving away too much of yourself. Or if you have weekends where you go out every single night, you start to feel so "not yourself," you are physically and emotionally drained.
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But, staying in has become the new going out. Being able to sit around alone or with your friends eating Chinese food and watching French movies that you don't understand. But it seems that with that being the new "going out," introversion is becoming a trend. We are glorifying it. People are now praised for being awkward and dorky and it's even accepted to just straight up say to your friends that you are going to stay in, instead of going dancing with them. And the weirdest part is? They understand. After I took the exam, I started to look at the life I was living and I would justify not going out by saying, "well I'm introverted." And I also saw the same from my peers as they go on and present their personality type in front of my class. Someone are like, "I'm quiet," "I hate having a large group of friends," "I hate going out," or the worst one of all "ugh this is really hard for me (giving the presentation) because I am an introvert. And yes some of it might relate, public speaking might scare the sh*t out of you but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. We have started to put all our lack of effort and conditioning ourselves to believe that we don't need anyone to be happy on the basis of being introverted.
When are people going to start to realize that we need human connection to survive? That being- feeling in touch with someone else is the best feeling in the world and that we need to stop labeling ourselves and using that label as an excuse to stop doing the things we fear. We should stop canceling plans and instead make more. Make more time to sit down and chat with someone even if it’s briefly. We should have more sleepovers with our girlfriends were we can sit around and just talk. I know most of us blame technology and say that, “oh we can’t do that anymore.” Or we think of the fact that if we stay in we will catch FOMO from watching other people’s Snapchat stories.
Introversion is trending and it’s a bad thing. It’s a way to justify the lack of human connection in our lives. Because no matter how hard we try we can’t seem to find the strength to put our phones away. People are not old fashioned anymore, they don’t gamble. They don’t take a chance on asking someone out even if it’s not a date, even if its just two friends going out and catching up. I don’t know if everyone is scared of catching the feels or something but we need to start hanging out and talking more. We should strive to find love for others, I don’t know why it’s so frowned upon lately. The idea of wanting to be in love, but maybe it goes hand in hand by saying that you don’t need anyone to be happy. And the fact is that it’s not true. I am the happiest when I am around people I love. I am the happiest when I walk the city with my bestfriend and we try to meet as many new people as we can or like we call it, “collecting creative souls.”
I know most of us are scared to break through and do things that scare us or share experiences with others. But we should and yes its going to be so hard. But promise me that you will try because there is no greater feeling in the world than sharing experiences with people that you love, talking until you go into topics that you never shared with anyone or even sitting and being in each other’s company. Because this trend is isolating us and giving us an excuse to do so, which in the end will only make us more out of touch with ourselves and others.
