We Are All Introverts Now

It seems that some people are finding lockdown harder than others. My sister, whose children are like chalk and cheese, has said it has been fascinating to see their opposing reactions. Her daughter, a natural extrovert, has been pinned to the windows, on the constant lookout for any sign of human life and when there finally was some, in the form of the arrival of the gas meter man, she befriended him without drawing breath- albeit at a distance. Without the solace of her band of pony-tailed playground comrades, anyone - it seems- would do. 
In contrast my nephew is apparently in his own version of seventh heaven. A natural homebody, lockdown has gifted him days that he always yearned for; at home, surrounded by family, knee deep in a box of lego. 
My husband too, is nearly unequivocally delighting in the experience. A social introvert, he is the only person I know to have ever answered the question as to what he wanted to do on a sunny Saturday with ‘Think’. That he can now do so, unencumbered by my plans, is for him pure joy. 
There is no doubt that this is the introverts time in the sun. And arguably its is long overdue. It has always struck me that the before Covid world ( BC and AC now taking on a whole new meaning) alway rewarded the extrovert. Noisy, social, accumulative, people were being increasingly measured by where they went, who they went with, their parties totted up like notches on the proverbial bed post and event invitations displayed like art. Time alone was a rarity & silence increasingly hard to find.  Calls to minimalism and the simple life were drowned out by the value seemingly given to the exotic over the ordinary. The description ‘homebody’ admitted to as a whisper, and only if you dared.
As with all brash labels, introvert v extrovert does not - of course- paint the whole picture of anyone. Most people are not in either camp entirely, but lie somewhere along the spectrum, a shade rather than an absolute. We are all, in truth, a combination of introverted and extroverted, a balance of outward and inward, of light and dark, of solar and lunar energies. And as my daughter insightfully said to me, introverts and extrovert isn't just about being shy or not, but much more about where we naturally draw our energy from. About whether solitude or company feeds us most. And the truth is, most people need a healthy combination of both.
For now, lockdown is forcing us to tap our more solitary selves. Our hand is being forced to seek more solace in the quotidian. To satisfy our wanderlust in the contours of our immediate surroundings or the landscapes of our minds. We are being called to draw inward, to see beauty in the details and to delight in the domestic. That many of us are yo-yoing daily between delight and despair is no surprise- we are many facetted beings. But perhaps we would be wise to recognise the discomfort it is throwing up as the age old battle between wants and needs. Could it be that the harder we find it, the more- perhaps- we need it?
Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells us that ‘ the secret of good old age is none other than an honest pact with solitude’. That we are all inevitably ( and god-willing) headed in the direction of ‘older’ means we will fare best if we take some time to nurture our more introverted selves. As long and as entrenched  as this experience feels, the one thing we know for sure is that it will pass. It could well be weeks or months or years, but impermanence is on our side with this one, and some version of the normal world will eventually return. When it does, its health and our own will be dependent on our capacity to need less, to do less & to keep ourselves entertained in simpler and less taxing ways. Which would make practicing being something of an introvert an entirely wise thing to do.