An Introvert in Quarantine
By Safira Schiowitz
The shock of this COVID-19 pandemic is palpable. I hear it in the voices of news anchors, I see it in the blank faces of my classmates during Zoom meetings and I feel it in the silence of the empty streets in my neighborhood. The world wants nothing more than to go back to normal, whatever that word means in this uncertain time.
I am no exception. I long for those scenic walks from class to class, when the sun hits just right on the Academy Building bell tower, when the fresh breeze carries the voices and laughter of people on the paths. There is no denying that our current state of affairs is far from optimal. But there has never been a time that I have felt so profoundly thankful for being an introvert.
I do not consider myself a wallflower, but I am certainly not a social butterfly. I fill my time with reading and writing, doodling if the inspiration arises, watching movies, practicing my instrument. All very solitary pastimes.
And that is my choice. I thoroughly enjoy the privacy and freedom of my introversion. This natural tendency of mine, to find things to do by myself, gives me an automatic knack for finding things to do while in quarantine. One such activity involves thinking about how all those extroverts are reacting to strictly-enforced social distancing.
It is interesting how people want freedom, but when it comes down to it, most would rather have someone tell them what to do. Once, a good while ago, I was talking to a friend about how her break was going. She complained that she was very bored because she had nothing to do. I asked her what she had been doing to fill her time. She said baking, and after that had gotten old, she watched Netflix. After a while, that too wore off in appeal.
But see, I find a contradiction in this. Before the break, I had talked to her about what she would do if she had all the time in the world to herself if she had total freedom. She had said she’d bake and watch Netflix. When she did have time to herself to do these things, she found that she would, in fact, rather have a task to attend to, something that someone had directed her to accomplish.
This situation describes what is called “Sunday neurosis” in its most basic form. As described by neurologist Viktor E. Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Sunday neurosis is “that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.”
What does this have to do with being an introvert or extrovert? See, introverts are more than content to work from home, and after the workday is over, to sit with a good book, and after they finish that, to do whatever the call of the wild inspires them to do. Most people, though, want to forget themselves in the buzz of the workplace. For them, quarantine is a nightmare. They have to do the work they would normally do but without human contact. It gives them purpose. Adults I know say they loathe waking up to another week of work, that they would love to stay at home and be with their families, even work from home. Alas, when they have the opportunity, they want the opposite.
How could this be? Surely many Exonians, who insist that their sole wish in life is to have one millisecond to breathe freely, sincerely want nothing to do? In truth, they don’t want that. There have been many complaints from students about boredom, with family, with baking, with Netflix. They’ve gone stir crazy and want Exeter back, with all of the work, all of the sleepless hours, all of the sweat, all of the grind. Just as long as they can have a little human interaction.
On behalf of all introverts, I give extroverts this advice: embrace the freedom, the nothingness, that you have so longed for up until this moment. “Enjoy yourself” is a vulgar phrase, considering the situation. Perhaps it would be better to suggest that extroverts try on the introvert’s shoes for a while. Rid yourselves of the outside world, get lost in a passion that you would never be able to indulge in otherwise and, as experts say, do not forget to practice social distancing.