On Quiet by Nikki Gemmell

Author:Nikki Gemmell [Gemmell, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522873245
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

V

I hate the very noise of troublous man Who did and does me all the harm he can.

John Clare

Shyness is the enemy and the bully. It ambushes me, the blush vining through my face; hot and impossible to halt. The reddened flush is a window to a mortified soul. It’s the raw me, exposed; awkwardness laid bare. Hello to the frenemy that’s been with me my entire life, that pulls me away from parties early; has me shrinking into silence at dinner tables where only the preoccupied host is known; has me mortified at the length of a charity debate I’ve foolishly agreed to do; has me dreading the school function where I have to walk in, alone. Shyness is the quietness that the wider world doesn’t accept.

The power of the pause. That thinking silence between the slap in the face and the reaction. That moment between listening and talking. That rescuing stopping before countering, in heat.

Social and cultural historian Joe Moran says he’s well qualified to write a book on the topic—called Shrinking Violets, no less—because he’s felt shy for as long as he can remember. He worries that some countries are beginning to medically treat this deeply human vulnerability. Shyness, in some places, is now being diagnosed as a psychiatric disorder. Yet psychologists are pushing back, believing it’s a move to ‘correct’ anything that falls outside the norm.

Do the socially awkward, who crave quiet, really need to be ‘treated’ by anti-anxiety drugs? Moran says he’s torn. There are certainly extreme examples of shyness where people can’t live their lives, but he thinks there’s a trend to medically treat things that may well be within the range of human experience.

Socrates could enjoy a banquet now and again, and must have derived considerable satisfaction from his conversations while the hemlock was taking effect, but most of his life he lived quietly with Xanthippe (his wife), taking a constitutional in the afternoon, and perhaps meeting with a few friends by the way. Kant is said never to have been more than ten miles from Konigsberg in all his life. Darwin, after going round the world, spent the whole rest of his life in his own house. Marx, after stirring up a few revolutions, decided to spend the remainder of his days in the British Museum. Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye. No great achievement is possible without persistent work, so absorbing and so difficult that little energy is left over for the more strenuous kinds of amusement …

Bertrand Russell

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