Innies and Outties

It seems to me that everyone leads two lives - an internal and an external one. Maybe this is nothing new and is common knowledge, but I've been thinking about it lately and how important / difficult it can be to balance the two. The internal life is composed of what you create in your mind - your dreams, stories, ideas, and emotions - both in waking and sleeping hours, while the external life is made up of what you show to people and the world - your words, actions, interactions, and products. They're separate lives, yet they're impossible to completely untangle from each other. Your internal life is influenced by what you say and do in the external world around you, and your internal life guides the external face that you present to others. When a person takes something from their internal life and expresses it externally, they create art. Stories typed or spoken from a person's imagination, notes strung together to make a new melody, images from a dream brushed onto a canvas - all are external expressions of a person's internal life and I think it's what separates us from other animals, other than the mighty opposable thumb. I am entirely open to being wrong, but it's hard for me to imagine dogs dreaming up a new contraption for playing fetch or bears whistling new tunes to themselves while they work. They live entirely in their external world. That's not to say that they don't have thoughts or ideas or aren't intelligent, but most of those thoughts are instinct-driven and are nothing new or original. Like a cat silently stalking a mouse - they are planning out how to pounce, but the plan is likely extremely similar to every other cat's pounce plan. It's what their instinct and training tells them to do. Where people, when confronted with a problem or situation, draw on their internal lives to help them out and spark a more inventive solution. Guess it's called critical thinking and creativity. Often times, though, the balance is tipped in favor of one of the lives. A person's internal life can be more vivid and active than their external life, or vice versa. I think this is where the idea of introverts and extroverts comes from. Introverts have more active internal lives and can therefore happily while-away the hours fueling their dreams and ideas on their own, while extroverts get more satisfaction and find more fuel in their surrounding world and would rather spend an hour talking out a problem with a friend than an hour typing out the problem for their own eyes only. Every single person has both lives and at times favors one over the other, but I think most people live consistently more strongly and vividly in one life. If either are neglected too much, though, bad things happen. Introverts need the time to let their inner lives develop and grow with no one around to interrupt it, but they should also not let their surroundings fade and darken too much or their life will only be half lived. I also imagine that extroverts need others to help them create a stable and secure outer life, but must take care to not neglect their own inner dreams and ideas or they won't be contributing their full potential to the pot.

I don't know why I'm typing this out. Sometimes I struggle to maintain a balance because my internal life wants so badly to forever be in control. It can make it hard to focus on what people are saying. It can make me dread parties and social activities and not let me leave my apartment all day. All the while my withering external life is hating me and clawing for attention. I think it helps to recognize that both exist in everyone and that we all probably struggle at least a little bit to find balance and not drive others or ourselves crazy.