Former Docent at the Museum of Missed Opportunities

Posted Sunday at 04:00 AM3 days

Shyness is like having an overzealous internal security guard stationed in our brains, patrolling for threats that do not exist, and insisting we present our passport, emotional background check, and a notarized statement of good intentions before we dare speak to another human being. We tell ourselves that we are simply “careful” or “reserved,” but in reality, many of us are just one unreturned smile away from retreating to our emotional fallout shelter with a tub of ice cream and a Netflix queue full of comfort shows.

The root of shyness is rarely about lacking conversation skills or needing a list of “fun icebreakers” from the internet.

Shyness, more often, is the deep suspicion that if we let someone see us fully, they will make the same grimace we make when we accidentally open the front-facing camera on our phones.

We have learned, sometimes through early rejection or betrayal, that keeping our cards close to the chest is safer. We may even convince ourselves that the other person should make all the moves, because if they were truly interested, they would storm our fortress with dramatic declarations of affection and perhaps a trained falcon carrying a handwritten note.

Unfortunately, a genuine connection does not work like that.

Connection is a mutual crossing of bridges, and in our case, the bridge is often rickety, fog-covered, and guarded by our own Javert-like inner critic who keeps shouting “They will never love you” in a French accent.

The critic, of course, is just our fear in a fancier coat, trying to keep things orderly by preventing us from doing anything unpredictable, like revealing our feelings.

Overcoming shyness begins with hitting our own version of “bottom.” Not necessarily a dramatic, Les Misérables-level crisis, but perhaps a quieter realization that our lives are becoming a museum of missed opportunities.

We grow tired of watching the people we like dance away into the arms of those who had the audacity to simply ask them out. We see that our fear of embarrassment has begun to embarrass us more than embarrassment itself. And so, we decide, sometimes with trembling hands and a queasy stomach, that it is worth trading the comfort of avoidance for the chaos of possibility.

Of course, we do not go from anxious wallflower to flirtatious social butterfly in one grand transformation montage.

We start small. We risk saying hello first. We let a pause in the conversation stretch for one uncomfortable second instead of rushing to fill it with facts about the weather. We make one genuine compliment without mentally rehearsing it for twenty minutes beforehand. We stop Googling “signs they like me” and start paying attention to how we actually feel when we are around them.

Examples of bravery for the shy among us can be deceptively ordinary.

It might be bringing someone a coffee without overthinking whether they will think it is “too much.” It could be revealing that we also love the obscure band they just mentioned, without worrying that they will test us on their discography. It might be resisting the urge to apologize for existing every time we take up conversational space.

In fact, recognizing and being extraordinarily kind to those attempting that kind of bravery is the brand of a hero. Should we witness that kind of grace, we are in the company of an uncommon soul.

The truth is, shyness is not a moral failing, and we do not need to bulldoze our temperament into oblivion. It is a signal of where our safety lies, and sometimes, we need to walk a little outside the safety zone to find joy.

Love, after all, is not built on perfect confidence or cinematic charm, but on the gradual courage to let ourselves be seen, awkwardness and all.

And while the inner critic will always mutter, it is possible, over time, to turn his volume down until his warnings sound less like prophecy and more like the faint hum of a distant refrigerator.

In the end, the shy person’s guide to love is less about becoming bold in the grand sense and more about becoming willing in the small sense.

Willing to risk a strange look.

Willing to endure a beat of silence.

Willing to be known, even in our nervous, overthinking, underconfident glory.

Because the truth is, somewhere out there, another shy person is also rehearsing their lines, wondering if we might be the one who finally walks across the bridge.

And wouldn’t it be a shame if both of us stayed at our respective ends, waving politely across the void?

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This post was previously published on medium.com.