Thought I would translate to you guys a very good essay on shyness by my fellow countryman(Brazil) Luis Fernando Verissimo(it's not scientific or anything, just good perception):
Shyness and contradiction
To be notoriously shy is a contradiction. The shy individual is horrified of getting noticed. If he(or she) has got notorious for being shy, then he has to explain himself. What's this throbbing shyness that attracts so much attention? If he has got notorious is spite of being shy, perhaps he was fooling himself together with others, and his shyness is just a stratagem for getting noticed. So secret that not even he knows it. It's like in the psychoanalytic paradox: only somebody who thinks he(or she) is really superior seeks an analyst to treat an inferiority complex, because only he thinks that to be inferior is a disease.
Everyone is shy, and the ones that seem shy are just more prominent. I defend the thesis that no one is shier than the outgoing. The outgoing makes a point of dragging attention to his extroversion, that way nobody would discover his shyness. Whereas in the notoriously shy, the shyness that he uses to guise his extroversion is the size of a parade car. Of that ones that never even make to the parade. According to my thesis, inside every Elke Maravilha<translation note: "Wonderful" Elke, a famous male transvestite in Brazil> there is a shy person trying to hide and inside every shy person there is a show-off shouting "Don't look at me! Don't look at me!" just to drag attention on himself.
The shy individual is absolutely certain that, when he walks into a room, all the attention is drawn to him and his spectacular shyness. If they whisper, it's about him. If they laugh, they're laughing at him. Mentally, the shy individual never walks in anywhere. He explodes in it, even if he arrives with the studied softness of a novice. For the shy individual, not only everybody but destiny itself does not think of anything else but him and what to do to embarrass him.
The shy individual is constantly pursued by possible catastrophe. He is going to trip and fall and with him the hostess. He is going to be accused of things he never did, he is going to find that he had his pants' zipper down all along. And he is sure that sooner or later the thing he fears the most is going to happen, which keeps him up at night and terrifies his days: somebody is going to give him the speech.
The shy individual tries to convince himself that he only has problems with crowds. When he fails to avoid and sees himself in front of an audience, he does not think its members as individuals. He multiplies them by four, for each one has two eyes and two ears. Four ways, therefore, to receive his bloopers. It's no use asking the audience to close their eyes or cover one ear to cut his discomfort by half. Everything is pointless. The shy individual, in short, is a person convinced that he is the center of the universe, and that his shame will still be remembered when the stars turn to dust.
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I'm sorry for any writing awkwardness. I'm not a translator. I hope to discuss more stuff here. Yeah, I think I'm shy. 20 years old, male. Take care.
Shyness and contradiction
To be notoriously shy is a contradiction. The shy individual is horrified of getting noticed. If he(or she) has got notorious for being shy, then he has to explain himself. What's this throbbing shyness that attracts so much attention? If he has got notorious is spite of being shy, perhaps he was fooling himself together with others, and his shyness is just a stratagem for getting noticed. So secret that not even he knows it. It's like in the psychoanalytic paradox: only somebody who thinks he(or she) is really superior seeks an analyst to treat an inferiority complex, because only he thinks that to be inferior is a disease.
Everyone is shy, and the ones that seem shy are just more prominent. I defend the thesis that no one is shier than the outgoing. The outgoing makes a point of dragging attention to his extroversion, that way nobody would discover his shyness. Whereas in the notoriously shy, the shyness that he uses to guise his extroversion is the size of a parade car. Of that ones that never even make to the parade. According to my thesis, inside every Elke Maravilha<translation note: "Wonderful" Elke, a famous male transvestite in Brazil> there is a shy person trying to hide and inside every shy person there is a show-off shouting "Don't look at me! Don't look at me!" just to drag attention on himself.
The shy individual is absolutely certain that, when he walks into a room, all the attention is drawn to him and his spectacular shyness. If they whisper, it's about him. If they laugh, they're laughing at him. Mentally, the shy individual never walks in anywhere. He explodes in it, even if he arrives with the studied softness of a novice. For the shy individual, not only everybody but destiny itself does not think of anything else but him and what to do to embarrass him.
The shy individual is constantly pursued by possible catastrophe. He is going to trip and fall and with him the hostess. He is going to be accused of things he never did, he is going to find that he had his pants' zipper down all along. And he is sure that sooner or later the thing he fears the most is going to happen, which keeps him up at night and terrifies his days: somebody is going to give him the speech.
The shy individual tries to convince himself that he only has problems with crowds. When he fails to avoid and sees himself in front of an audience, he does not think its members as individuals. He multiplies them by four, for each one has two eyes and two ears. Four ways, therefore, to receive his bloopers. It's no use asking the audience to close their eyes or cover one ear to cut his discomfort by half. Everything is pointless. The shy individual, in short, is a person convinced that he is the center of the universe, and that his shame will still be remembered when the stars turn to dust.
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I'm sorry for any writing awkwardness. I'm not a translator. I hope to discuss more stuff here. Yeah, I think I'm shy. 20 years old, male. Take care.
