 |
| Don't worry folks, it's not as bad as it sounds. There's a happy ending! |
I don't know about you, but I only seem to learn things the hard way. That is to say: when some kind of pain is involved in the process.
Except maybe languages: I'm not experiencing actual pain in learning German, I am mostly amused and entertained.
Anyway, any other lesson involves me reaching my limits, suffering when I hit them, and then figuring out how to overcome them and make the pain stop. In recent years, I have become a fan of doing things without too much of a safety net; of abrupt, challenging changes; of jumping into things instead of slowly walking into them.
I have a feeling I wouldn't feel this confident in all the things I've learned, if I kept the cautious attitude (which I generally have!) all the time.
In recent weeks, after four months of permanence in Berlin, even my introverted self started feeling lonely. And it ached so much it became more than just emotional pain, I could feel my stomach squeezing, unrest ran through my veins because I ached so much to get human contact.
So, what do you do when you're shy, introverted, don't like loud environments and you'd rather be dead than having to entertain a chat with random people on nothing interesting to you?
Here's what you do.
You put a good amount of your normal barriers and filters down.
You search for people who share your same interests and contact them, in person, via phone, or email.
You actually get to meet them instead of just talking to them from a distance.
What happens next is that you have a good time, you make new friends with whom you actually have something interesting to talk about, and you cultivate your hobbies or interests or what you have.
Lesson learned: how to get meaningful human contact when needed.
The extraverts among my readers will probably see nothing special in all of the above, but for an introvert it's a huge step. Worth celebrating. :)
