Trading Places | Part II
*Read the original post on Trading Places, a reflection on the trip to Morocco.
Last year this time, Galen and I just completed hiking the 200km Tour du Mont Blanc through France, Switzerland, and Italy. French cows ate baguettes as we joyously walked by. A year later, life cannot be more different. Under a global pandemic, traveling is out of the question. We are all staying at home.
In the grand scheme of things, the lockdown is quite manageable despite small inconveniences, and there is only room for gratitude for the front line medical staff and essential workers.
Life cooped up in a few hundred square feet all day long removes the daily commute, the chitchats by the coffee machine, and the access to dining, hiking, and other activities. Galen and I have responded to this change differently. As an extrovert (For lack of better description), I crave the variety of stimuli. After a few months of staying-at-home, fatigue and dreariness occupy me. However, what I perceive as the banality of life creates a heaven for Galen, who thrives upon focus and alone time.
Same life, two realities. He feels FINE. I feel NOT. What is going on with me?
Galen relates to my emotional journey with what he often felt in the pre-COVID world, an energy-depleting world full of buzz and the social pressure to be outgoing from his vantage point. In that world, I tried to coerce him to go out with me and felt bewildered when he didn't get as much joy as I did. It is hard for the outliers to fit in.
Now I understand how he felt. We have traded places, and live in a setting that is a lot easier for introverts than extroverts*. Now, the outlier is me. Words intended to encourage such as "why not try doing XYZ to feel better..." sound belittling. Why can't I just be myself?
I promise to Galen I will never drag him to house parties when he needs alone time when things go back to normal again (hopefully that will happen soon).
We don't need to travel the world to build empathy. We need to keep our eyes, ears, and minds open when different human reality dawns on us.
*For lack of better description of our personality traits, I will resort to extrovert/introvert though humans are multi-faceted and are impossible to capture in a single attribute.
