Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes

by Jessica Pan

There are a lot of heated debates about what defines an introvert or an extrovert. The main accepted definition is that introverts get their energy from being alone, whereas extroverts get their energy from being around other people. But psychologists often discuss two other related parameters: shy versus outgoing. I always assumed that all introverts were shy, but apparently some introverts can be ultraconfident in groups or capable of smoothly delivering presentations. What makes them introverts is that they just can’t take stimulation and large crowds for extended periods of time.

So what were other people out there with jobs and close friends and rich, fulfilling lives doing that I wasn’t? Eventually, and with mounting fear, I realized: they were having new experiences, taking risks, making new connections. They were actually out there, living in the world instead of staring out at it.

We’re told that we can engineer conversations to be more emotional and interesting by understanding that we all have a “Surface Self” and a “Deep Self.” The Surface Self talks about the weather, facts, what we had for dinner, our plans for the weekend. The Deep Self talks about what these things actually mean to us and how we feel about them. Deep Self holds on to our fears, our hopes, our loves, our insecurities, our dreams. Surface Self is preoccupied with logistics, facts, details, admin. Deep Self is the wedding vows; Surface Self is the wedding planner. Deep Self likes to stare into your eyes talking about your secret desires, while Surface Self keeps checking out of the conversation to plan their shopping list.

sharing our vulnerabilities and insecurities is the quickest way to make a real connection with someone. Most people want to boast about their lives, but this leaves people feeling jealous or resentful. “It’s not that we want others to fail, but we need to know that our own sorrows have echoes in other people’s lives. That’s what connects us. Strength may be impressive, but it’s vulnerability that builds friendships,”

“We think to be interesting we have to be impressive—but sharing our failure connects us more than sharing our success.”

“Think about a dinner party,” he says. “We take so much time cleaning our house and cooking the food, but then we just let conversations run rampant and stay shallow. But we can go deep. We can edit. We can alter the course of the conversations and make connections for life.”

I’m told that the older we get, the easier talking to strangers will become. With age, we grow more confident and less involved with what other people think of us.

We feel desperate or weird reaching out for friendship, but we shouldn’t. It’s important.” True. Friends listen to you, laugh with you, give you advice, encourage you, inspire you, fill your life with joy. A big source of my loneliness is not having a close friend I can call and meet for coffee at a moment’s notice and share everything that’s been happening in my life. Or a group of friends to go out with. Nothing big. Not too showy. A small coven I could count on to cast spells on my enemies. Brené Brown calls these friends “move a body” friends. You know. The people you call when you accidentally murder somebody.

Studies show that we’re spending more time online than ever before, scrolling through our social media accounts, liking photos of strangers’ cats and dinner plates, reading twenty-four-hour news, watching the latest Twitter meltdown of our world leaders unfold, but all of this connectivity is leaving us isolated. While the internet creates a space for introverts to find like-minded people and online communities, it has its limits. It seems like everyone is relying so much on technology and social media for our interactions, and while we can write witty tweets or heartfelt Instagram comments, we don’t know how to say hello to the cashier at the grocery store without breaking into a sweat. We’re at risk of losing our ability to interact with other humans in person. Social media is a huge part of the loneliness problem (we’ve stopped meeting up with our existing friends in person, we struggle to meaningfully talk with each other), but maybe technology can also be the solution.

taking the first step might feel awkward, but literally nothing in life happens if someone doesn’t make the first move.

Sometimes, though, friendship is like love. You can’t plan for it. It finds you in unlikely places. Or in the most obvious place imaginable.

even if we’re smart and hardworking, a big factor in professional success is who you know. Research has shown that it is our outer circle of acquaintances, also known as “weak ties,” that brings about the most change in our lives. A “strong tie” is our close friends and family, who are likely to have similar connections and knowledge as us. It is the weak ties, the people we are only loosely connected to, who are actually more influential on our lives. They bring new information, advice, and perspectives: new job prospects, commissions, fresh inspiration, or collaborators that we would otherwise have never discovered.

According to Richard, radiating charisma is actually easy and can be done in a couple of simple steps: ask an open-ended question (not something that can be answered with a yes or a no), listen to someone’s answer, and then show how much you care about their response by asking them a meaningful follow-up question: How did they feel about that? What was that like? What appealed to them about that? And then, crucially, you validate their feelings: “I work as a dog walker and hang out with dogs all day.” “What’s that like?” “It’s amazing, and I love it. Dogs are the best.” “Yes, they are. That does seem amazing. I would love it, too! You are brilliant.”

“Sometimes the best thing for our mental health is Netflix and takeout, and sometimes, actually, it’s so much healthier to leave the house, go outside, see people, and experience something new.”

I do not want to regret not doing the thing—whatever the thing may be—anymore.

Nearly everything in adulthood is goal oriented: increase productivity, function on less sleep, make more money, run faster, cycle farther. Fifteen-minute meals. Seven-minute workouts. Even meditating is less “path to enlightenment” and more “how meditating can help you smash your workday!” That’s because as soon as you enter the real world, playtime is over. Kaput. Done. There are no more outlets for sheer whimsy. We’re just expected to be finished with it. Forever. Or be satisfied with getting scraps of it from Twitter memes, Beyoncé dance classes, and pets’ Halloween costumes (introvert whimsy). Which explains, in part, why the music festivals I avoid are so wildly popular: it’s the only socially acceptable time for grown men and women to wear tails, frolic in capes, and cover themselves in glitter and face paint like it’s a seven-year-old’s birthday party (extrovert whimsy).

loneliness is circumstantial. We move to a new city. We start a new job. We travel alone. Our families move away. We don’t know how to connect with loved ones anymore. We lose touch with friends. It is not a damning indictment of how lovable we are. Introvert or extrovert, shy or outgoing—loneliness can catch you no matter who you are. And it’s common. It’s been described as an epidemic, and a minister for loneliness has been appointed in the UK. In the US, a recent study found that 43 percent of the twenty thousand participants don’t feel they have meaningful relationships and that 46 percent felt alone either sometimes or always. It’s not just the obvious candidates—the elderly, people living in remote locations—who struggle, either. Today’s sixteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds report feeling lonelier than those of any previous generation. Between social media, email, and meal and grocery delivery apps, we can outsource most in-person encounters to our phones, and the reliance on this technology increases with each passing year. Everyone experiences loneliness at some point in their life.

Introverts crave a particular kind of connection, so while extroverts might get a buzz from a busy city where they have small, surface encounters with people, introverts tend to feel lonely in crowds, even if they are interacting with a few people. (In other words, we’re difficult to please.)

There’s this feeling that we should be self-sufficient, islands on our own, but secretly, introvert or extrovert, we all crave finding “our people” and physically hanging out with each other. Sometimes in small doses, sure, but we still crave intimacy.

But there are no do-overs in life. This is a lesson I’m still learning as an adult. This trip happened. These days were real. This is life. Stop acting like it’s a rehearsal.

I learned a lot about loneliness. As an adult, sometimes if you’re lucky, you have close friends from childhood nearby, but when you move away from home or outgrow your old friends, you have to find your people. And it’s so hard. It can take years. You have to actively go out and get them. You’ll need them for when life gets dark or one of your loved ones has just gone into the operating room for major surgery and you’re standing in the hospital corridor, scared out of your mind and you really, really need someone to sit beside you. But once you have these friends, you get to keep them. Even if they move to, say, Paris or Portland, they’re still yours. And everyone gets lonely. Everyone I met talked about it. It sneaks up on you, especially if you don’t protect yourself from it.