Quiet Please

There is a funny type of people in existence who appear shy, sensitive and serious. 

Perhaps you know one, are married to one or are a parent to one. Maybe (said with a whisper) you are one: an introvert. 

History shows that introverts have, well, made history: Rosa Parks defiant on the bus, Albert Einstein focused in his lab, T.S. Eliot absorbed at his desk.

Susan Cain's book "Quiet" is a best seller, a book with a pristine white cover, all about the power of introverts. She makes a fascinating and thoroughly researched case that quiet folk, those of us who want to slink off to the corner at parties and find small talk awkward, are not quite as peculiar as we feel, or others think.  Susan, herself highly introverted, has been on a journey of listening to uncover what the quiet folk among us can bring to a world that just can't stop talking.

In our mentoring work at Lifespace Trust, we work with hundreds of individual young people each year. Our mentors create a safe place for them to tell their stories and work out how to work through tricky issues in their fast-paced lives - friendships, moods, body changes. Being a teenager is a full time job. Some young people are ready and willing (and brave enough) to chat away: "This is me, this is my story". 

While that's a great place to start, we also meet young people who feel like they don't fit in, are not sociable and mostly feel alone. Eye contact doesn't come easily, and as for participating in group work, that's just a horror. But the tragedy is they perceive they are worth-less because of it. 

As if talkativeness was the measure of our value.

One lad I know ate his lunch in the boys' toilets every day just to get away. In fact hiding is a common trait of introverts. We need time alone to recharge our energy. He truanted from school for most of a term with anxiety, until he eventually formed a strategy where he sat quietly in a chair in his bedroom before school for twenty minutes just to get ready for the day. He would...

1. write down some thoughts; 

2. take some slow deep breaths; 

3. and remind himself that he could take the day... just... one... hour... at a time. 

It turned things around for him. From quietness, came his strength. Not unlike a little chap called Mahatma Gandhi, the all-time King of Shy.

What's my point? Perhaps as a new school term starts there will be a fresh flush of anxiety. Worrying thoughts will interrupt sleep. Yes the qualities of friendliness and teamwork are valid qualities for all young people to aspire to learn, but let's not miss the fact that some young people (and parents too?) will need something that's quite rare in today's relentlessly noisy world: a quiet place where the outside noise is switched off, and there's nothing weird about that. 

It's not odd, just important. 

For some of us, it is from quietness we find our courage. 

From quietness, comes our creativity. 

From quietness, we can finally hear ourselves think. 

So, if you score zero on the introvert scale, be patient with those quiet people around you. They do have meaningful things to say but you may need to ask them what it is! And if you are introverted, give yourself quiet spaces to recharge. Even in the toilets at lunchtime if you must. 

The stark truth is this: Your presence makes a difference to the people around you more than you know. Quiet people really can help make sense of the world.

(images courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net / (c) this article first appeared in Connection Magazine, September 2013, author: Chris Spriggs)