What do I know about being an introvert, and when did I know it? When did it occur to me I was one? What did it mean when it dawned on me? How did I know?

I don’t know when it first occurred to me that I was an introvert. I believe it came to me over time, slowly. It must have started when I was around ten or so when I had my first inklings, but I had no words to describe it. This all began because I felt different from other kids who were more outspoken and who always talked in class and raised their hands every time the teacher asked a question of us. I always felt uncomfortable when called on, and sought to say and do things quickly enough so I could sit down again. At the time, what was happening wasn’t something I was conscious of, but in time it was all too familiar, and I became very much aware that there was a difference in the way I was treated compared with most other kids, especially those whose hands shot up so quickly. The difference wasn’t very subtle to me as a child, it was clear as day and night. They were accepted and valued more than I was. They were given more positive responses than I was. They were the favored kids, and I, not so much.

For a time, it was confusing because I was just coming out of the period of WWII, and my family’s experiences in the concentration camp in Southeastern Colorado was fresh on my mind. I was afraid the difference in treatment might have had to do with residual anger from Pearl Harbor, and it was because I was Japanese. There was some hostility from certain of the kids, but all of the teachers and the principal had made a clear and definite effort to protect the five of us Japanese cousins from attacks, and it seemed unlikely that my teachers were leveling any hatred against me because of race.

I eventually figured out that no, it wasn’t racism or hatred left over from the war, it had to do with something vastly different. It boiled down to the other kids being favored because of who they were and how they performed in class. Race wasn’t even a distant factor in what was happening, it was whether one was outgoing and joining in discussions and participating in class, as opposed to one who was reticent and shy, waiting to be called on and rarely raising one’s hand. Years later I learned the word for this was introversion, and the one who waited to be called on was often an introvert. That was me. Being an introvert was the reason I felt so different from the other kids, at least from most of them. In reality there must have been others like me who were shy ones, but at the time I was less conscious of their presence than I was of those who later I learned were extroverts, the favored ones.

As a child I spent much of my time worried about things going on inside me, why it was that I felt so different, and what made me this different kind of creature. I gradually became aware of how I acted in relation to the kids I saw as favored and valued, as well as how the other kids were that made them so appreciated. I studied them, and it wasn’t long before I figured out how it came to be that they were favored: they were outgoing, they talked a lot, and they enthusiastically raised their hands and actively participated in class. They were obnoxiously joiners, contributors, and they were talkers. Teachers, it seemed, liked that. This was something I was determined to understand, and I began to try on their behaviors, especially in class. It was uncomfortable, but I persisted. Over time I grew adept and skilled at mimicking this behavior, successfully copying what I thought would make me more acceptable. Eventually I was so accomplished at it they began to see me as one of their own, and in my gut I was now okay.

My experiences started to change, both with the kids and my teacher. I was more accepted and drawn into the play and other things the kids were so involved in, but now I was one of them. I had succeeded in a transformation that I thought saved my life. I was now okay because I was now accepted for who I was. Things would now be different for the rest of my life. At least, so I thought in my childhood innocence. But it wasn’t real, because it wasn’t really who I was.

Time has a way of wearing down one’s rough edges, and one becomes softer, more rounded, and more importantly, more grounded. As I got older, I spent much of my life as a transplant extrovert. Underneath it all, however, I was always an introvert. I behave now much of the time as an extrovert, but my true self is that shy kid in the fourth grade hesitant to raise his hand. I am the shy guy who late in life came out as truly an introvert, who had learned how to think and behave like an extrovert as a child in order to be accepted.

Here’s the rub: we are all, each of us, an introvert or an extrovert, but we live on a spectrum and are at times a mix of both. On the one end is the introvert, and sliding along the spectrum to the right, all the way over we find the extrovert. As for me, I am a full-blown introvert, and I know there are my counterparts on the other extreme who are wholly extroverts. Some of us are mixed as introverts, being partially true, who then make up the rest of their personality being somewhat extrovertish. Anyone with any degree of self-awareness will know this about themselves, and will operate at times as their true selves, and other times moving out socially into the realm of the extrovert, and they do just fine. Speaking in public is decidedly hard for me, but I can do it when I set my mind so.

Out of all this, the one factor that distinguishes the introvert from the extrovert is the relationship each has with the world of the inner. Where the introvert basks in and freely enters this realm, extroverts exert some energies in order to cross its borders. Both were born of this inner space, and for each it can be a sanctuary, but for one the return home comes with ease.

In our society there is a decided favoring of extroverts among us. This is still true in our educational system, where outgoing students are still the favored lot. This is true in business, where firebrands are the ones on the fast track up the corporate ladder. It is true in virtually every corner of our world where ones who put themselves forward are acknowledged, and the more reticent only through some accident of fate may be discovered or noticed. This is why I was so intent on mastering becoming an extrovert those many years ago. Today, in my more solitary and quiescent moments, I appreciate the nature of my true self, just being an introvert.