Quiet

A quote by the trends manager at youtube. He told his young audience,

“We all want to be stars, celebrities, singers, comedians.” Not “most of us”, or “some of us”, but “we all.”

Of course, to be overly stereotypical, its true. To some degree we all want to be the object of someone else’s attention. I for one, however, am very thankful that I don’t need to be the extrovert ideal! Anyway, I just really wanted to copy the quote at the bottom from “Middlemarch”, because I really like it – even if I think its much more than just “partly” and “half”. If it weren’t for the countless unhistoric acts and those who live faithful hidden lives, where would this world be?

Below is part of an interesting article stemming from the youtube guy’s quote.

It’s refreshing, after this, to read an extract in yesterday’s Guardian from Susan Cain’s “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking”. Cain writes that we live with a value system she calls “the Extrovert Ideal—the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight.” For Cain, this is “an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform”.

The article finishes with this line.

As George Eliot wrote, 140 years ago, at the very end of “Middlemarch”:

for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

The article was found on moreintelligentlife.com, a division of the economist.
* Just to be clear, the picture has no real connection to the article, just couldn’t find anything that really fit the content.