“…solitude matters, and for some people it is the air that they breathe...”

All my gratitudes today are a part of a TED talk by Susan Cain called The Power of Introverts. My father sent it to me.

"Many of us do recognize ourselves as one type (introvert or extrovert) or the other and what I’m saying is that culturally we need a much better balance, we need a yin and yang between these two types. You know this is especially important when it comes to creativity and productivity, because when psychologists look at the lives of the most creative people, what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas and advancing ideas, but who also have a serious streak of introversion, and this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to creativity. So Darwin, he took long walks alone in the woods and emphatically turned down dinner party invitations. Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, he dreamed up many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in La Jolla, CA and he was actually afraid to meet the young children who read his books for fear that they were expecting him to be some jolly Santa Claus-like figure and would be disappointed with his more reserved persona."

“in fact we have known for centuries about the transcendent power of solitude, it is only recently that we have strangely begun to forget it. If you look at most of the world’s major religions, you will find seekers -Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, seekers who are going off by themselves alone into the wilderness, where they will then have epiphanies and revelations which they then bring back to the community. So no wilderness, no revelations.”

"It turns out that we can’t even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring and mimicking their opinions. Even about seemingly personal and visceral things."

“There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

“Introverts, you being you, you probably have the impulse to guard very carefully what is inside your own suitcase, and that’s ok, but occasionally, just occasionally, I hope you will open up your suitcases for other people to see because the world needs you and it needs the things you carry.”