INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT: The Appetite for Trivial Novelty
People are classified as either introverts or extroverts. This classification is very ambiguous and not particularly practical because a person can be both introverted and extroverted. It’s just that it’s an alternating process: the classification has greater value when we analyze the frequency of the periods when introversion or extroversion occurs.
If an individual is an introvert most of the time, he is put into a niche and branded an introvert and if he acts in a completely different way he is stigmatized under the definition of extrovert. However, I am well acquainted with people who exhibit intermediate stages of personality. They are introverts who seem to be extroverts. They are congenial and sociable, while at the same time their “reserve” and “caution” is such that deep down they are classic introverts. In my opinion, the introvert is the individual who does not share his inner self with others.
The truth is that one can be an introvert with all the rest of humanity, yet a complete extrovert with just one person in the world. We see women who can share their inner self with their mother or their husband and with nobody else. It is also true that we sometimes compartmentalize our lives. We share some things with some people and other things with other people. We work with some, study with others, dance with some, fight with others; with some we make love, with others we converse, with yet others we drink. We have to realize that it’s impossible to share everything with only one person in the world. We need many different people to share in the various activities and functions of our life. It’s because of this that love relationships between people who need to mutually absorb and bind each other end so quickly and so disastrously, even though they started out so well. Only after many break-ups, heartaches and uncertainties do they realize that each has to give the other breathing room in order to love and be loved and not be the recipient of the other’s complaints and uncertainties.
Introversion has a great influence on love relationships. I think the introvert has more problems because he internalizes his love. He is often incapable of expressing the heights of beauty or revulsion we inspire in him. He feels alone and the feeling consumes him, with one result: satisfaction or frustration. After a while he reaches his limit, upon which he explodes and all that he was never capable of saying pours out in two or three hours, in an uncontrollable state of anxiety or anger, with tears, or disguised as irony — in a thousand forms! In this case it is easy to conclude that the problems lie in a lack of communication. People talk about trivialities, immerse themselves in superficialities, apparently happy, often not even listening when spoken to. We could also employ the terms introversion and extroversion to this subject, but we shall use their synonyms instead: “self-absorption” and “outward orientation.” These terms were defined by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who was educated in Germany. Always living outwardly, frivolously, being aware of this, that and the other, this is being an extrovert or “outwardly oriented.” But man is capable of being quite the opposite. That is to say, he can go inside himself and look within to learn more about himself and discover his ultimate reality, the truth he may hate or seek to avoid. The self-absorbed person manages to detach himself from things, he tries to be more genuine, he is surprised at his conduct, he sees himself as a stranger…and he goes on in this fashion getting to know himself, weighing each step, getting to know all that goes on around him. But man is a being destined for action, and the meaning of extroversion or outward orientation, is precisely that, outward-going action. It is logical, therefore, to wonder how we reconcile this apparent incompatibility — simply by taking into account the fact that self-absorption, the path of introversion, is followed by a stage of practical activity, putting into action what has been serenely developing in the calm of inner tranquility.
Self-absorption leads to solitude and anguish leads to feelings of abandonment — which is very close to solitude. It is only in solitude, far from turmoil and the temptation to avoid his own being, to flee from himself and intervene in other people’s loves, that man can contemplate restructuring his life. In self-absorption man bares himself and stands face to face with his real Self. Solitude makes us aware that we, our feelings, are not transferable. Anguish may or may not be a part of solitude (solitude can be pleasurable), but we experience solitude as though it were composed of especially painful notes, as if it were something gloomy coming to hover around and enshroud us in its mists. When in anguish man feels hopelessly alone. In anguish, man experiences abandonment, the ultimate and most absolute solitude of all.
It seems that today everything is set up in such a way that human beings don’t have to think or reflect and are becoming an amorphous mass constantly affected by stimuli from modern society that demand attention in a thousand ways for different and varied reasons. This results in dispersion, an appetite for trivial novelty. It is only one step away from an anonymous existence. In this fashion man distances himself more and more from his inner self. With this style of life, distanced from his inner self, man can only approximate animal life and ultimately become an animal. Self-absorption does not only achieve the opposite effect, but the more soul there is in human nature, the more possibility of anguish there is also. Where there’s more soul, there’s more anguish. That is why beasts do not suffer from anguish and, sadly, there are people that to call them beasts would be an insult to the animal species.
