Drinking it in

I drink a lot. No, I don’t mean alcoholic beverages, although occasionally it is those. I mean life. I drink in life in so many ways. I absorb whatever is going on around me, whatever is going on in the world, in the minds of the people around me. When I go to a party, I am overwhelmed by all the stories going on around me, the little dramas playing out between people and within people.

I think this is the real difference between extroverts and introverts. The extrovert can put themselves out there, be the life of the party, and keep going, because they aren’t taking in anything of the people around them, they are just putting it out. For me though, the cup is filling, filling, filling all the while, and while I may be also putting myself out there, I am absorbing as well, drinking in the substance and energy of those around me as well. And I become full, I run over the top with those around me, and I need to go find my space again to be still and become empty again, so I can go back and absorb more.

And though people accuse introverts of being self-absorbed, it isn’t that we are self absorbed at all. It is that we are other-absorbed, that within a few minutes we know you, we absorb you and feel who you are. You change us, we become you. And to find ourselves again, we have to retreat and back off and take the time to recharge ourselves. To become empty. So that we can do it all again, and know more, even deeper, always deeper.

You have rabbit holes? Show them to someone who is introverted, and they’ll help you learn to crawl through them, dig out more, go deeper, find another way back to the surface.

You have lakes of meaning? We’ll absorb them. And if you are shallow, we’ll know it and get bored easily. And if you are an ocean….

Ah.