The Introverted Thinker Newsletter #006
An article on what a 'popular loner is', a mind-bend of a book, and a philosophy podcast episode that helped me with emotionally tough times.
Hello again!👋
I hope you’ve all had fulfilling and productive weeks. My exams finish tomorrow and I can finally start dedicating a HUGE portion of my time to writing more, so expect some exciting content coming up. ✍️
I wrote this piece last week titled “Six Hidden Habits of Popular Loners”, it’s quite a personal piece and I’ve included half of it right here below.
Six Hidden Habits of Popular Loners
Tucked away in the midst of the crowds.
I. Always Telling People You Are Busy
Loneliness is sort of like a never-ending spiral staircase. You start at the top, then you descend further and further into loneliness the more you keep it to yourself, and the further down the staircase you get, the darker it is.
It is a compounding problem.
Even though the popular loner may have many friends who care about them, this out-of-place feeling of being ‘alone’ will leave you with less energy than you normally have. It’s known as emotional exhaustion.
With this hit to your energy levels, it becomes increasingly fatiguing to keep in touch with people and maintain meaningful connections, which of course pushes you down to the depths of the spiral staircase.
It’s likely that your friends want to meet up with you and have some fun, but your default excuse is to say “I’m busy.”, to compensate for your mental fatigue.
If you are lonely right now, something that helped me was just reaching out to people to go out anywhere, even for an hour. People underestimate the importance that social contact has on your brain.
Psychologist Susan Pinker says “dopamine is [also] generated, which gives us a little high and it kills pain, it’s like a naturally produced morphine.”
Sure, we should never resort to drugs to soothe our emotional issues, but interacting socially is everything you need.
II. You Keep Telling Yourself You’re ‘Different’
Loneliness plays funny tricks on our fragile minds. As I mentioned above, we make excuses to avoid social situations and subsequently become more lonely, well here's another one of those excuses.
As Thought Catalog says: “The less connected to others we feel, the more we feel the need to justify our disconnection. And the more alone we are, the more we feel the need to categorize, define and explain away our loneliness.”
When I was lonely, I kept telling myself I was different from others my age, that no one could understand me and if I tried, I’d stick out like a sore thumb.
This is known as the ‘spotlight effect’, where you feel like everyone is noticing all the little things you do way more than they actually are. Here’s a little insight: People don’t care that much.
Using the “I’m different from other people” excuse is probably one of the main driving forces of your loneliness. I know I pushed away a whole group of friends who felt like a brotherhood, just because I thought we were ‘different’.
At the end of the day, other people’s personalities aren't responsible for your loneliness. It’s all on you. Once you accept the responsibility for why your social life is the way it is, you can learn to suck it up and start making more of an effort with people.
It’s harsh but it’s the advice I’ve needed at times.
III. People Think of You As Mysterious
In my experience, being labeled as ‘mysterious’ comes from two different things.
The first one is that you are a naturally guarded person, so subsequently people don’t learn much about you because you keep it to yourself. The second is that you seem to do your own thing, without a care in the world for fitting conventional stereotypes or ideas. Therefore, people who are ‘normal’ won’t understand you.
Being mysterious is the pinnacle of what it means to be a popular loner. It’s the typical perception that you are pretty well known by people, but no one knows the real you.
This isn't a bad thing perse. For me, as an introvert, my personality traits are naturally considered mysterious by the extroverted ideal society. Here’s a thought I had recently after being labeled mysterious all my life:
Opening up and letting people know the real you is actually a nice feeling. The more people you feel understood by, the less lonely you will feel.
A Great Philosophy Podcast Episode You Need to Hear:
Philosophize This Episode #086 Sartre and Camus pt. 1 - Freedom:
Sartre and Camus are two of the most famous philosophers from the 20th century and they are both french. They are also the key thinkers who led the Existentialism movement, which is a philosophy that says life ultimately has no meaning, but we are free to choose our own path and make our own meaning.
This episode is about the latter part of the description I just gave you. The freedom to choose. Because according to these two chaps, that’s what gives life meaning. And I agree.
An idea in this episode is that you are a free individual that can choose to do whatever you want in your life, with no restrictions. It’s a pretty liberating thought isn’t it?
It gives an example of a waiter, who wants to change his career, but he tells himself he is trapped and is stuck waiting tables for the rest of his life with an angry face. Sartre says that too many of us do exactly this, we cut the legs from under us that allow us the ability to choose, and create a false barrier that makes us feel like we have no choice.
The most insightful point in this episode for me was about relationships. When people are in relationships, they ignore all the bad signs of incompatibility despite being with them for a few years. Then one day they wake up, realizing all of this, they say:
“I can never leave them! We’ve been together for 10 years now”
So should you waste another 10 years of your life? You may feel like you cant function without this person or that you can’t reinvent yourself. But you can.
Sartre would say that people always avoid making these difficult life decisions, like leaving a partner because they are desperately trying to avoid that short-term period of discomfort that their freedom can give them, so they tell themselves one of these stories to avoid short term discomfort.
The host of the episode finishes on a powerful line about this matter:
“They end up putting themselves through long-term agony in an attempt to avoid short term discomfort.”
You can be anyone you want in life. And you arent tied down to any restrictions, even if the fear may seem like you have no choice.
Use your freedom.
A Mind-Bending Book That Has Inspired Me:
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami:
Kafka on the Shore is a magical-realism novel written by Haruki Murakami, perhaps the best novelist/writer to ever come from Japan. He is incredibly famous worldwide.
This novel of his embodies his weird style of writing with magical-realism. The whole book feels like a strange abstract dream, in the best way possible.
It’s about a 15-year-old boy who runsaway from home, and an old-man who is retarded but has the ability to speak to cats. The book includes many weird things that make no sense, like when it starts to rain sardines from the sky, or when Colonel Sanders (the face of KFC chicken) appears in a Japanes alleyway as a pimp, or when the 15-year-old boy has sex with a ghost.
As you can see, it’s very weird. And I love it. For me, I found the book to be revolving around the theme of fate a lot, in that what is meant to happen will happen, and we should just go along with life, trusting whatever comes our way.
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you lay this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you.”
He is so poetic and his writing blows me away. It also made me realize that when I end up writing my own novel, I’d also write about magical realism in a dark and weird way.
I rated this book 5/5.
The Thinker of the Week
Every week, I include a key historical thinker who has impacted the world through their thoughts and actions. They can vary from philosophers, artists, designers, psychologists, sociologists, writers, eastern meditators, and political theorists.
Johannes Vermeer: 1632-1675:🇳🇱
Vermeer was a Dutch artist born in 1632 in a small and beautiful city named Delft. He hardly left Delft and had ten children. His career was never a huge success during his lifetime nor did he make a lot of money. But he is world-renowned now.
We currently live in a world full of fake glamour. The main role that artists have is to turn our attention away from the false glamour onto the most helpful and useful things. They can identify things we usually overlook but should instead focus a great deal on.
A serving woman plating up bread and milk was not thought of as anything special in the late 1650s. When he painted the above painting, Vermeer didn't try to find a famous model who was well-respected. Instead he focused on an ordinary scene that most people wouldn't have given a second thought about. This is the type of artist Vermeer was.
This painting right here best sums up the philosophy of Vermeer. It seems pretty boring though doesn’t it? It is one of the most famous pieces of art in the world. Its got a special place in Amsterdam’s great Rijksmuseum and is insured at a price of £100 million.
This painting wants to show us that the ordinary everyday life can be noteworthy and admirable. It’s a painting of a regular home with women cleaning, watching the children, and spinning cloth. It captures what life is really about.
This is an ‘anti-heroic’ picture: a weapon against false images of glamour. It rejects that glamour depends on luxurious acts of status, but on the simple things.
Vermeer dieed in 1675 in his early forties, having left behind one key message that is crucial to us now.
What we think matters is not urgent, or special. Most of life involves dealing with ordinary things, like doing the dishes, or cooking an average meal. Slightly boring things, to be honest. But we should focus on these average things, because they are most of what our life is about.
An appreciation of simplicity and formality.
Thanks so much again for reading!😁
As always, I had such a blast writing this, and if you enjoyed it, leave a comment, a like, or share it on Twitter. It motivates me. ❤️
Enjoy your next week and I’ll be in touch again soon.✌🏻