Being Yourself
When I was five, my three-year-old brother walked me to my kindergarten classroom every day. I was shy, and the little boys up and down the hallway knew it.
"They aren't mean," my brother said. "They're just talking to you."
"I know. But I don't know what to say back."
So he walked me to class, smiling and nodding at the boys who called greetings to us.
This is how I remember it, though I know it's incorrect; my brother didn't talk until he was four. I talked for him, translating his expressions and gestures, helping our parents understand him. I talked for him, and he walked me to class.
Messed up kids, right? We'd probably both be on psychotherapy and medication, nowadays. But in fact we weren't messed up. We were just ourselves, and back then that was allowed. Moreover, no one messed us up by panicking and labeling us. No one made a big deal about our respective pecularities at all; our family, our friends, the people at church--everyone just smiled and made adjustments for us, just as we (as we grew older) made adjustments for them.
People aren't as easygoing anymore. Today's LA Times notes that:
And it isn't just shyness that is perceived as a problem. Somehow we've become so homogenized that even normal variations in personality, any variations in personality, strike us as dysfunctions to be medicated or psychoanalyzed away.
The one refuge remaining isn't a bar--Cheers notwithstanding--but a church, especially small churches, which are today what villages used to be, places where everyone, however peculiar, belongs.
"That's just Ken," people say, shrugging. "Oh, you know Lucille . . . " And the beauty is, they do know Lucille, and they let her be Lucille--shy, perhaps, or moody; generous to a fault, acerbic, gregarious, forgetful, wise, persnickety, all the wonderful variations of human lives.
"They aren't mean," my brother said. "They're just talking to you."
"I know. But I don't know what to say back."
So he walked me to class, smiling and nodding at the boys who called greetings to us.
This is how I remember it, though I know it's incorrect; my brother didn't talk until he was four. I talked for him, translating his expressions and gestures, helping our parents understand him. I talked for him, and he walked me to class.
Messed up kids, right? We'd probably both be on psychotherapy and medication, nowadays. But in fact we weren't messed up. We were just ourselves, and back then that was allowed. Moreover, no one messed us up by panicking and labeling us. No one made a big deal about our respective pecularities at all; our family, our friends, the people at church--everyone just smiled and made adjustments for us, just as we (as we grew older) made adjustments for them.
People aren't as easygoing anymore. Today's LA Times notes that:
Recent surveys have shown that more and more adults are troubled by shyness. The reason, experts suspect, is that current society places a high premium on being outgoing and vivacious.It's not that more people are shy, mind you, but that more people are bothered by being shy. Being different, nowadays, is bad--so bad that, as the article notes, pharmaceutical companies make commericals telling us that if we're shy, we need medication. (The commercials were pulled after the FDA objected, saying they blurred the lines between garden-variety shyness and mental disorder.)
"There used to be many more opportunities for people who were socially shy and reticent to live in small communities, work at home and limit their social interactions," says Stein. "Now . . . if you want to get ahead, you have to be out there in people's faces.
And it isn't just shyness that is perceived as a problem. Somehow we've become so homogenized that even normal variations in personality, any variations in personality, strike us as dysfunctions to be medicated or psychoanalyzed away.
The one refuge remaining isn't a bar--Cheers notwithstanding--but a church, especially small churches, which are today what villages used to be, places where everyone, however peculiar, belongs.
"That's just Ken," people say, shrugging. "Oh, you know Lucille . . . " And the beauty is, they do know Lucille, and they let her be Lucille--shy, perhaps, or moody; generous to a fault, acerbic, gregarious, forgetful, wise, persnickety, all the wonderful variations of human lives.
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