"INSIDEPIDP"

Objective

 

Susan Horowitz Cain is an American writer and lecturer, who left her flourishing career as a Wall Street Lawyer, to be a writer at home and with her family. In her book ‘Quiet’, she talks about the power of introverts. Her 19-minute 32-second TED-talk about the power of introverts is beautifully crafted and articulated. With over 10 million views in three years, the talk has gained popularity as a voice for introverts.

 

Cain initiates the talk by describing how as an introvert, she had to hide her inner calling for quiet and solitude, just to feel accepted by her colleagues, friends, and the world. She cites examples of making self-negating choices like hiding away the books that she wanted to read, going to crowded bars- when she hated to and even deciding her career as a Wall Street Lawyer.

 

Cain says that psychologists have found that most creative people have a serious streak of introversion in them. She enlists in her talk, many great men, who were introverts, some of whom were great leaders, saints, and even successful businessmen. She says that transformative leaders like Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi; the great scientist Darwin, the master storyteller Dr. Suess, Steve Wozniak-the inventor of the first Apple computer and even many seekers of the world’s famous religions – Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad were introverts. 

 

She emphasizes how introverts have special traits. She says that introverts are more creative, more knowledgeable, careful decision makers, unique thinkers and better leaders, as compared to extroverts. She believes that if introverts be themselves, they can provide solutions to most of the problems in the world.

 

She condemns the world’s madness for constant group work. She talks about people imitating and personalizing the others’ thoughts in groups and killing their own creativity. She blames this constant madness for group work to America’s cultural inheritance that has always preferred the ‘man of action’ over the ‘man of contemplation’.

 

Cain’s talk is a very engaging one and one of the best parts of the talk is the prop she uses- her suitcase, to signify things which are important to us, but we hide them away in our suitcases as we don’t want to be the odd one.

 

She ends her speech with three calls for action.

1.    Stop the madness for constant group work

2.    Dive inside yourself – have your own revelations

3.    Occasionally, examine what you are hiding in your suitcase.

 

Reflective

 

Susan Cain has a point to make. Her thoughts just clicked with mine right at the end of her speech when she gave the three calls for action. I felt that I could sum up the three calls in a few words- Be yourself and reflect, and these words have been most dear to me all my life.

 

Cain’s stand against constant group work also resonated with me, as I could relate it to my experience. I realized that we all need a balance between group work and isolated work. In India, classrooms are designed in a manner that each student has an isolated workspace. Students are so used to that isolated workspace that when something like working in groups is imposed on them, they become restless and uncertain about how to perform, how they would be scored and even sharing their ideas for fear of being copied. On the contrary, the teachers’ staff rooms are open workspaces where all the faculty is stocked in one open room. In that room, they sit and wait for their lectures and talk. The faculty is often seen cribbing about the need for a personal workspace as sitting all the time in open workspaces kills a substantial amount of their time. Hence, my learning was simple, no single model is appropriate. For students and teachers, rather in a more general sense for everyone to be at their best, a blend of everything is important. They need to know how to work in teams and they need to know how to dive inside and reflect.

 

Cain started her speech with a personal story about how, It was about how she loved books and how it seemed perfectly normal to her when her mother packed her books for a summer camp, which she had to hide in her suitcase during the camp, to avoid being looked upon as odd. She used this story to indicate how people fail to understand introverts. The suitcase, where she hid her passion about books did touch a cord in me, but her story according to me was out of place. Like in a meditation camp people are expected to reflect alone, similarly in a camp with a theme ‘ROWDIE’ people are expected to be outgoing. This story was more about the lack of exposure and adapting to situations, rather than intolerance towards introverts. I am a mother of a three-year-old. For the first two years when I was in India, I made my son wear socks or bodysuits in which his feet were always covered. I wanted to protect him from the pollution and dirt. Now, when I tell my son to leave his feet bare, he is reluctant. I am having a tough time, making him leave his socks. I see my fault in it, I did not expose him otherwise and a repetitive activity made him conditioned to wearing socks all the time. Somewhere I could equate the socks and the books in that suitcase.

 

Cain’s call for letting introverts be themselves seemed like an incomplete call to me. I think, our society needs to learn to be tolerant not just to introverts or extroverts, but to every form of difference in people, be it race, caste, creed, social status, nationality or gender. At one point during her speech, I was actually thinking that if an introvert has hidden her books in her suitcase, then, what would I find in the suitcase of a brilliant poor black female who also happens to be an introvert?

 

My thoughts are probably colored by the fight for justice and equality for woman happening in my home country and also by another TED-talk I stumbled upon just after I had finished with this one- it was a talk on racism by James A. White Sr., titled-The little problem I had renting a house. I think our world is still centuries away or probably even departing further away from a simple call for action- live and let live.

 

My interpretation of what she called ‘the power of introverts’, was at most times ‘the power of reflection’. I could not deny, that it is, reflection that generates new ideas, that gives birth to new thinking, that makes us all calm and that is the source of all wisdom. Yet, I would not underestimate the power of groups also, as it is grouping that makes people communicate, discuss, refine, redefine and spread their ideas. Ideas die when not communicated and spread. Many times during the speech, I felt that I could replicate almost her entire speech and make it a great talk on reflection just by replacing the word ‘introversion’ by ‘reflection’. Cain’s examples of people who were introvert, again made me feel the same thing. The people she talked about had mastered the art of reflection and that made them great. Also, a few, as I know, were in no way introverts. Gandhi for that matter spent most of his life surrounded by people, mostly strangers and he did not express any discomfort in that.

 

Cain’s talk touched another issue in my mind, the need for the call of a universal model of things. Once again, I could feel how we differentiate things and then take sides for one. Like working in groups or isolated, like preferring introverts or extroverts. I think we need to understand that the differentiations are a way to understand and classify traits or characteristics. In the real world everything exists together, that’s how the universe was designed. Just like digital technologies are creating isolated-lonely people, similarly group-think can create a threat to introverts or self-reflective practices. I think we just need to learn to balance everything. This need for a balance was raised by Cain also, in her speech though not very strongly.

 

During the speech, I felt as if Cain had misinterpreted some of the research pieces she quoted. My thoughts found resonation in Keith Sawyer’s blog where I found evidences quoted by the author about how Cain had many-a-times looked over or misinterpreted facts. She probably did this, to make her cry for the space introverts need, stronger and bolder. After all, this need had made her suffer in her own life. She had chosen a career as a Wall Street Lawyer that she did not want and then left that career to pursue her inner calling. Probably, she needed a justification for all that, for her own peace of mind. She tried to do that, when she said that, her choice to be a Wall Street lawyer was influenced by her determination to prove to the repressing world that an introvert could do anything. This part of the speech, about her career choices, did give it the dramatic touch which is a key ingredient for successful speeches.

 

After listening to her speech, I did start thinking where I fell on the introversion-extroversion scale and I found a quiz on introversion and extroversion by Cain. Contrary to what I always thought myself to be, I found that according to that quiz I was an introvert. However, her description at the end of the quiz about what introverts are like, was exactly what I think I am, but the strange part was, so was her description of extroverts.

 

Interpretive

 

Cain’s call for introversion touches a cord for many who have fought for their solitude. Somewhere it did resonate with me also, but not beyond the fact that everyone needs acceptance in the society. Cain crafted her thoughts on introversion very sequentially, but she interpreted many research studies and many peoples’ reflective habits, the way she wanted to. Just to highlight the power of introversion. I did like her focus and her intent to build a very strong case for introverts and she did actually achieve what she wanted.  But she failed to win over her bias and looked at things and interpreted them just from the angle she wanted to see. I felt that sometimes we are so stuck to what we believe in that we wear blinkers like horses and only stick to our own direction of thought. I strongly believe that loving solitude or groups cannot be the benchmark to decide who would be the creative one or the idea generator.

 

Through her speech, I realized another truth about our society and our world. I felt that we are all rat-societies. Pardon me if my words sound harsh. But we love following what is ‘in’. Be it isolated creativity or group work. We seldom like breaking out of the bonds of our confirmation bias and examine things as a whole. 

 

Her call for balance saved it for her. Had she not, stopped at a point in her talk, to embrace extroverts, she would have gained widespread criticism as two-thirds of the extroverts she talked about would have stood against her.

 

Creativity is the function of deep reflection and thought, which comes from thinking and for deeper thinking we need a blend of inside awakening and outside stimulus. It is not just important for introverts to indulge in reflective practices, it is important for everyone. As far as accepting people is concerned, I think it’s both ways, introverts need to accept the outgoing ways of extroverts and extroverts need to accept the silence of introverts. Before listening to Cain, I had not bothered to ascertain who in my family or friends is an extrovert and who is an introvert. We all have always accepted and respected the personal preferences of everyone and so do most of the people I believe.

 

Hiding your desires to be socially accepted is another issue and is influenced by many situations and environments. In my society girls are told to speak less and be less outgoing. That would mean that at many times it would be harder for the extrovert females. This would imply that probably everyone has a suitcase and it is biased to say that suitcase introverts carry is heavier or more full than the one others carry.

 

This suitcase is very important to deal with. It’s in this suitcase we hide what we think is not accepted by others and by the world. This suitcase is home to all the complexes in us. This suitcase can unleash large treasures for us if we learn to stop carrying the burden of it. Treasures that can lead us to happiness, enlightenment, and creativity. I had once heard in a sermon by a spiritual guru, that most of us pet a small bird that sits on our shoulder. This bird starts speaking to our mind when we want to do, speak or act in a way that might be considered socially inappropriate. He had advised that to be free we need to let the bird fly away. Cain’s suitcase is that bird for me.

 

Decisional

 

Cain’s talk made me realize my own fault in bringing up my son, had she not quoted the books example, I would not have found the reason for my son’s stickiness about wearing socks. Now I know that I need to expose my son to a variety of scenarios so that he can make his own choices and not get conditioned by selective things I expose him to.

 

I realized another important thing. Owning to my experience of teaching in classrooms for several years where students had their personal workspaces and had very limited chance for group work, I had started looking at the group-work model in classrooms as the best solution to engagement problems in my students. This talk made me realize that I was wrong and that what an ideal classroom needs is a balance of reflective thinking practices and stimulating group activities.

 

Cain’s suitcase leads me to another important decision, to open my own suitcase and see how I have filled it in all this time. I am mostly alert about the suitcase and I try to keep it empty. However, it was her talk that made me realize that probably in settling in down a new country and making my place in a new society, I had filled it again. Also, after her talk I reaffirmed by decision of doing my best to assist my son, to be free of the bird or the suitcase as he grows up.

 

Most importantly, I realized that in my teaching I need to be very careful and ensure that none of my students feel the bird sitting on their shoulder or feel like hiding away their suitcase. I believe I can only do that if I instill confidence in my students and expose them to a variety of social and intellectual situations.

 

However, I did become firmer on the need for a universal model of everything where classification is only used to differentiate a variety of traits and characteristics, and is not treated as a way to prefer or ignore someone.

 

Lastly, I learned to examine everything from all angles and not follow and propagate anything without an unbiased introspection of facts and reality. 

 

 

References

 

Cain, S (2012, February). Susan Cain: The power of introverts. [Video File] Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts?language=en

 

Cain, S. (n.d.). Quiet Quiz: Are You an Introvert or an Extrovert? [Web Page] Retrieved from http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/about-the-book/quiet-quiz-are you-an-introvert/

 

Keith, S. (2012, January 16). Does Solitude Enhance Creativity? A Critique of Susan Cain’s Attack on Collaboration. [Web Blog] Retrieved from https://keithsawyer.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/does-solitude-enhance-creativity-a-critique-of-susan-cains-attack-on-collaboration/

 

Shsrivastava, A. (2012, June 19). Was Gandhi really an introvert? [Web Blog] Retrieved from http://ashutoshsrivastava.com/2012/06/19/was-gandhi-really-an-introvert/

 

White Sr., J.A. (2014, November) James A. White Sr.: The little problem I had renting a house. [Video File] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/james_a_white_sr_the_little_problem_i_had_renting_a_house?language=en