Power of Introverts

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen. Simply wait. Do not even wait. Be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet. Franz Kafka

This quote feels like a poem to me. I want to insert line breaks, to slow the thought, to savor and absorb the whole of the way of being contained there. This is the essence of my practice for life.

I am reading Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. (Crown Publishing, 2012.) It's an extraordinarily well researched and clearly written book, full of stories and illustrations of the findings of the specific studies relating to how extroverts and introverts function in society, how we Americans hold to the extrovert ideal but not all societies do so. It's full of reminders that both ways of experiencing and interacting with the world are valid and needed.

Both / And.

I need all those stories and illustrations Cain gives, but I can't begin to remember them all. Thus I come back to practicing the essence that is contained in Kafka's words. A recipe, instruction. I'm here to affirm that in my quiet, solitary time I come to be at ease with the emotions of experience that otherwise would be beyond my enduring. Without the practice of coming to quiet I would surely need antidepressants, I may have come to suicide, for my world experience includes much pain. Yet there is also all the rest: the deep blue of a clear sky over a place of open country, i.e. the middle of nowhere which is really the middle of no-ones; little Lucy in my arms pointing to the ruffle of clouds three days after new moon, begging to see again the huge, luminous, weeks-past full moon, "Moon? moon?"; the love that radiates to me from all my family and friends, and I am blessed with many. 

I will never attempt to publish this poem in this form elsewhere, so I will include it here, a poem of grief and refuge. 

Monday

The trees know the season, in spite of summer-like warmth.
All of them gradually show fall colors. These days light
shines through with the orange-gold richness so typical of October.
The yearly quilt made of individual leaf scraps spreads out on the woods floor,
each scrap still holding its bright color. They will turn brown in today's rain,
then more still-bright-colored ones will layer over them.

The phone call came at daybreak last Wednesday.
In the dark hours my sister's grandson,
our Ryan, died.
Nineteen years old.
His heart stopped
and would not be started.

I am laid out flat on the ground of grief.
But wait. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.
I notice my heart still beats.
Unbidden, my breath flows.
I did not die; I am alive.
Sweet and bitter truth.
I am still alive in this body of earth
with all I've ever learned and known 
now given one more experience,

another chance to be transformed.

Here is my refuge.

After a time I move to small, ordinary life things.
Draw and drink a glass of cool, sweet water.
Make coffee: filter, grounds, water, brew, pour, sip.
Walk out on the deck and notice the natural world
which both does and does not notice me. Now
all long standing habits support and direct my day.
Here is my refuge.

Pick up the phone, share the news with family
and folk willing to listen and hear. Days add on, again
and again I am embraced by friends, neighbors, a community
of those who carry all there is with me. Step, step, step, step.
I pace the known, mysterious path. Alone in my skin
and never alone. Never alone. Never alone.
Here is my refuge.

The dogwood leaves drop, blood red. One frosty morning soon
a puddle of gold will have fallen overnight to cover the ground
over the roots of our maple tree.

I am working to distill this one to publishable form, but perhaps it's not now possible for me. Still, it is another version of understanding and dealing with the experience of the world that, as Kafka says, "offers itself... unmasked."

P.S.("...the so-called Big Five traits: Introversion-Extroversion; Agreeableness; Openness to Experience; Conscientiousness; and Emotional Stability. (Many personality psychologists believe that human personality can be boiled down to these five characteristics.)" 227. My training is so old--or insufficient?-- that I wasn't aware of this. I want books on the other four traits, too. And then I'll come back to practicing the way of the Kafka quote.)