Saturday morning introversion

Susan Cain: The power of introverts | Video on TED.com.

I am so glad I have real friends on Facebook who post interesting things I wait two days to watch because I think it is going to take too much of my time.

This video is only nineteen minutes long, and well worth every single minute. I identified with this woman in many ways.

For a start, my favourite part of Christmas as a child was Boxing Day – the day after, when I would sit and read one of the books given to me as a present, despite my mother encouraging me to go out and play with the other children.

Once, we lived in a house which had a “family room” and a lounge. The family room contained the old lounge suite and the television. The lounge is where everyone sat when people came to visit. I was about twelve years old when one night I disappeared after dinner with my book. I sat in my mother’s armchair in the lounge with the door pulled to. I was reading in absolute peace – what bliss! The world beyond the shadow cast by the reading lamp vanished as I entered the world of the story inside that hardcover book with the tatty dust jacket purchased from the secondhand store with pocket-money.

My mother was delighted to find me ( I had ignored her calling me for the first time in my life) and thought me very “grown up”. I think she understood then about my need for solitude. I was seldom disturbed when I had my nose in a book after that. I should add, for the record, that my mother loved books, and libraries and bookstores, and it was she who introduced me at a very early age to the wonders of the spoken and written word. In the days before television, she and my father would read of an evening. Now that they have retired, they visit the local library every week, where my mother makes a beeline for the “new arrivals” section with all the latest books.

One thing Susan Cain said has been zooming around in my head all day:

So the key, then, to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us.

She also said that “solitude is an essential ingredient to creativity”.

I won’t spoil the ending for you by repeating the other things I jotted down. Listen to the talk, take from it what you need – tell me about it in the comments below – and discard the rest (because inspiration will come again when you are ready to receive it).

Allison