So looking at the men who comprise sort of my "inner circle" of friends there's one remarkable trend: most of them are tortured introverts. That is, they have these inner worlds that are rife with inner conflicts, struggles, questions, wrestlings with God and with themselves over issues like calling, purpose, identity and why the NHL even bothers having playoffs any more. Okay, I made that last one up--nobody I know even cares about why the NHL bothers having playoffs any more.
I was talking with one of these tortured introverts just the other night. He was asking me why I had relationships such as these.
I think the answer is that I am an off-the-charts-extrovert who does not want his entire life to be comprised of externals. I want to have a rich internal life that fuels my work and my relationships. I want to be thoughtful and engaged in the world of ideas while at the same time working out those ideas in ministry and in my relationships.
One barometer of whether or not I'm actually living out this desire for a rich internal life is this blog. I started this thing because I had so much stuff going on in my head that it was getting a little bit crowded in there. I needed some way to process it. I needed a vent. So I started Piebald Life.
When I'm healthy--which includes reading thoughtful books as well as being in Scripture regularly and journaling--I've literally got thoughts stacked up like circling planes waiting to be blogged about. I told someone the other day that I blog about every 36 hours. Her response was, "About what?!? What you had for breakfast that morning?!?" But when I'm healthy, these posts are just piling up, waiting for expression. Sometimes I'll write up a couple of posts at the same time and just publish them later.
When my life overly-consists of externals, my internal world goes flat-line. And so my blog quality is a good barometer of my internal health. And these last several weeks have been pretty blah. Which is pretty indicative of the life I'm living right now.
But give me several weeks and summer time's here. And then it's a whole different ball game. And hopefully I'll have the space and time to pursue those internal-world things that give the external stuff of my life the quality and texture that I so deeply desire.
2 comments:
Hey Alex, I'm Kate. We met at IV awhile back and Wyatt gave my your blog.
I really like this post of yours. As an introvert, it really made me think about how other people would want to be introverts (since sometimes I desperately wish I weren't one). Your post inspired me to write one of my own. Thanks for sharing.
kate, thanks for visiting and posting a comment! hope you can feel secure in your God-given introvertedness...it's a great gift to us out-of-control extroverts!
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