"That woman is a bitch," said Nathaniel, who sat next to me in the plane. He was sharing with me about his family problem, detailing his parents divorced and falling apart, with his mother living with him and his father with the "bitch", It felt a bit different now that I am reasonably "qualified" to "guide" the youngster on similar family experience. Nathaniel, who is only 20 year old, appeared quite open minded, however, and willing to share, perhaps due to his young age. I do enjoy my chat with him in this long journey. I saw that he was quite receptive and that made me open up to him about my similar ezperience. I told me that I had sought counselling help while I was 18 or 19 year old, and what's worse and hard to bear was for you to realise later in life that, things were a lot worse than originally thought to be. Understandably in situaitons like his or mine, it is easy to think that life coming to end too soon and hard to live. Yet, it should not stop one to puruse one's interests and why not. It is hard, especially if family problems become a potential distraction. I can see Nathaniel to be a potential introverts given that he shared a common interest with me, i.e., writting.
I can see that "writing" has served some useful purposes for him in helping him "describing his ownself". I added and I shared with him, how writing had helped me. It cleared my mind, It had helped me remove "chunks" of "thoughts" out of my "crowded mind" as I put down my thoughts in writing, which helps me see things in newer perspectives. More importanly, I stressed to him the importance of dream for someone with "dyfunctional family" upbringing. That is, it helped them find an identtity. If interruptions set in, like in his case or in mind, we found the "deviation" early on, and slowly we detached from the families and lost ourselves, It added to the vinuerability and potentially could turn us from bad to worse. If succeeding your dream is hard, then under situation like this, finding one's dream to pursue is even harder. Because you can't focus, you are too distracted. Like Nathaniel, he appeared like a talented young guy. He can write lyrics, poems, play guitars and even do consuelling for younger kids at school. However, he seems not sure which one to pursue in the long term. If one needs to fail, it's better early than later. Following your heart only meant you were honest and still not meant things would become easy. We always must give it some times for things to materialise and take shape. Thati s so much I can share with Nathaniel or implied to him.
I reflected upon what I said to Nathaniel and found that the greatest challenge for an introvert is in fact to find the identity. I felt weaker not having one, and more so coming from the family upbringing. I was forced to find my identity elsewhere. Perhaps not being a relative extrovert, where central focus of strength comes from people they actively engaged in, the "identity" or the "self-concept" becomes very important for an introvert and for it to be found. But, once this is found, there will be no going back, and everything that moved will be to the future, where the strength of the introvert will slowly emerge in the process of fulfiling those dreams.
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