Quiet By Susan Cain Book Review — Patrick Asubiaro
Have you suddenly felt or feel a desperate urge to escape to somewhere quiet, like a toilet, cubicle, or probably move out of a brimming environment? Until I read this book, Quiet, I thought I was the only one. I see a lot of my friends going to parties and feeling so happy and I wonder why I feel so compelled to be alone. Perhaps there’s not enough iron in my diet, but it’s not just me, it’s a trait shared by introverts all over the world, we feel this way because our brains are too sensitive to over-simulations. I am genuinely astonished at this book, in fact, I read the book continuously nodding my head and knowing myself more, saying to myself so that’s why I am like this, this why I am like that, it’s because I’m an introvert, so its fine to turn down parties without having to worry if I’m acting weird.
Cain is a introvert, it has always been, she writes, “private occasions that make me feel connected to the joys and sorrows of the world, often in the form of communication with writers and musicians I’ll never meet in person”. She’s an introvert in a world that, she argues, excessively and misguidedly respects extroverts. We make them our bosses and our political leaders. We foolishly admire their self-help books, such as How to win friends and influence people. Before the industrial revolution, she writes, American self-help books extolled character. Nowadays it’s personality.
We introverts attempt to emulate extroverts, and the stress of not being “true to ourselves” can make us physically and mentally ill. One introvert Cain knew spent so much of his adult life trying to adhere to the extrovert ideal he ended up catching double pneumonia. This would have been avoided if he’d spent time recharging his batteries in toilet cubicles, and so on.
At the Harvard Business School, socializing is “an extreme sport”. Extroverts are more likely to get book deals and art exhibitions than their introverted counterparts. Cain had to persuade a publisher she could conquer her stage fright and promote herself at book festivals before they agreed to take her on. In America, extroverted parents have been known to send their introverted children to psychiatrists to have their introversion “treated” out of them. We think extroverts are great because they’re charismatic and chatty and self-assured, but in fact they’re comparatively narcissistic and unthoughtful and we’re committing a grave error structuring our society around their garrulous blah.
I finished Quiet three days ago and I can’t get it out of my head. It is in many ways an important book — so persuasive and timely and heartfelt it should inevitably effect change in schools and offices. It’s also a genius idea to write a book that tells introverts — a vast proportion of the reading public — how awesome and undervalued we are. I’m thrilled to discover that some of the personality traits I had found shameful are actually indicators that I’m amazing. It’s a Female Eunuch for anxious nerds.
Cain says we’re “especially empathic”. We think in an “unusually complex fashion”. We prefer discussing “values and morality” to small talk about the weather. We “desire peace”. We’re “modest”. The introvert child is an “orchid — who wilts easily”, is prone to “depression, anxiety and shyness, but under the right conditions can grow strong and magnificent”. When I got to this part I think: Yes! We are like orchids! With good parenting we can become “exceedingly kind, conscientious, and successful at the things that matter to us”.
Still, her suggestions on how to redress the balance and make the world a bit more introvert-friendly are charmingly cautious. The way forward, she argues, is to create offices that have open-plan bits for the extroverts and nooks and crannies where the quiet people can be quiet
I give this book ten stars and recommend it to all introverts, this book will expose you more to who you are and the amazing things you can do or achieve in the world of extroverts, I mean, a world that can’t stop talking.
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