Discourse On The Lives Of Shy People

Elevator. Ground Floor. I have to go to the sixth floor. And the small box is filled with women. A lot of them. But there is little space for one to squeeze in. One waves her hand and asks me to get in. I smile and say - 'No thanks!'. 'What's wrong? Get in! There is space for one!', she asserts. I sweetly refuse in a matter-of-fact tone, 'No please, I am basically a shy person you see!'. They all burst into laughter. Yes. HR ladies, they are!

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Jokes apart, the life of an introvert is not to be snorted away but one that needs to be understood in the right way. While the whole world chooses to be in the center of the theme, we choose the corners. Is it wrong to like the corners? Has not God chosen the corners of the earth to station his angels? Well yes, attention is one thing we do not crave for. Recognition? - no thanks, keep it with you. We are not insecure or timid or suffer from low self esteem. We are people who love the quiet. We stand away from the normal standards of life. We do not go with the crowd. Nor do we pass judgments. Only that we wish if people could leave us alone the way we are.

Yes, we have the problem of those abrupt silences and awkward pauses sometimes. We might come across to you as screw-ups, silly idiots and extremely dumb. Or we might look like real crazy morons and you could be thinking that we are very aggressive folks. We do not have any problem as to how you see/treat us. Your conclusive remarks on us arise only out of your fail discernments. Never would you understand our inherent tendencies to be able to attach meanings to whatever we say/not say and do/don't do.

Not that we do not know to speak, just that at times we prefer not to. Not that we do not know to crack all those jokes, just that we prefer not to say things that would sound as lame as the ones that are generally cracked and expect people to laugh. But we observe. We precisely know the size of the freckles and the count of the wrinkles and moles on the visible parts of your body. We know the length of your brow and the wave-forms it makes as you speak. The lip twitching, the short shrugs and the walk styles. We understand your movements and derive the right meanings. We can mimic perfectly well. We are the best orators. Our minds are intricately beautiful - music, so, is in our blood. We do not hurry. We keep secrets. We are slow to judge. We are perfectionists. We wait for our perfect time. Even if we knew it wouldn't come, we would still wait. Deliberation and finesse are our ways of life. We articulate and create our own worlds which people of mediocre mentality cannot comprehend.

There is misconception that shy people are overcome by fear, cannot exhibit their talents - and so, people think that the best of our kind are glued to their books, deny the company of men , build labs, do researches there and become those boring, uncool scientists. To me, shy people - disregarding the worldly definitions of 'best' - are in fact the best when they are in the company of men. The simple reason being - they can easily stand out without fear of exclusion. Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis Presley, Ingrid Bergman, Tom Hanks and the list goes on and on. These stars have been in the company of men all their lives - not just the company but they have been admired by more than half the globe. If you read about them, you would know they were all shy even after they became celebrities. Ella is referred as the 'First Lady of Song', Elvis - the 'King of Rock and Roll', Bergman won 3 Academy Awards and is ranked the fourth greatest female star of American cinema and Hanks - do we need words to describe his talents!

We have a petition to make. We rarely find people who can understand us. That is a very sad thing. There are very few people who could read the intent of our thoughts right. We are always mistaken. Some foolishly believe that we cannot influence others - not knowing, the greatest revolutionaries the world has ever seen were of our kind. They have all successfully shaken the world in times past. Try observing us more, I am sure you would fall in love with us. Yes, you would be baffled by the fluency of our romances. We make the best of friends. We add to the human element even in a professional setup. You would have no idea how loud we could get in the company of friends. No one would dare take all those risks to value companionship like we do. We mean what we say or we don't say a thing. Period.

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P.S. Conclusively, It's okay to be shy! (*^.^*)