Insignificance pertaining to a Ballet of Personalities

“Isn’t it irritating when you’re the only one being left out? But because of self-restriction: We introverts don’t rush down the waterfall but instead, stay at the base and are reluctant to get carried away by the force.”

I wouldn’t be much of an introvert but somehow, I nodded to Mister Krasinki’s analogy.

I don’t see myself as an introvert. But it feels wrong to call myself an extrovert either. Somehow, I fall short of crossing the line. Not seeing myself from the two, it made it more and more senseless to call myself an ambivert, or so called the combination of two personalities.

For me, I was only at a stalemate─enigmatically hanging by a thread for a nonexistent fourth option.

“But I don’t see you being that kind of person. Perhaps you’re not one of us, then?” Mister Krasinki’s wondered, accusatory for how his eyes glinted but went back to wiping plates and glasses.

I don’t know for certain if I went to his restaurant to eat, or to be lectured. One mistake of letting my worry be verbalized, he suddenly became “Did you know?” and I could only pick the whole conversation being cryptic. I didn’t show signs of displeasure, though.

I only chuckled and floored his irony down. “For a self-proclaimed introvert, you sure speak to me like you’re at the other side of the coin.”

“I’m between the two.”

That’s somehow hard to believe.

Though it has nothing to do with him nonetheless

And although it has something to do with me, I wouldn’t be much of a person taking after countless protagonists in fiction. I would just be a character mixed in this river of Latin characters tackling on the topics that differentiates, present similarities, simplifies, breaks, stitches, attracts, and merges the three, or in this case, four personas─introvert, extrovert, ambivert, and “at a stalemate”─altogether.

A curious and nonsensical talk that presents the different persona of people around the world.

Let’s see…Of people who are seen as genius, brimming with talent since the very day they were born; People who have been geniuses all throughout their lives but aren’t recognized by society; People who are geniuses, recognized and not given attention both at the same time.

Of people who are seen as talentless, are only there to be the biggest trash for society to handle; People who are talentless, without any chances of improvement, but are just going with the flow too smoothly; And people who are without the talent, protected and persecuted equally, exerting precaution to systems.

“Of how people interact with each other, whether it be positive or negative, it’s terrifically hard to even think and process how they’re all mingling and gradually shaping up society, right? Like a thread that had been disheveled, and was intertwined into chaos but people are so oblivious not to untangle the intertwining thread and just go with the flow of life.”

I understand but at the same time, I don’t. Maybe I'm only keeping up with the bullshit because I tend to create my own explanation whenever I don't understand a damn thing about what people say.

“So you’re trying to say, if only society would work to fix the disheveled thread, there would be peace and life can be lived without any worries at all?”

“I haven’t dived into the idea of world peace but if you think about it that way, it’s plausible. Perhaps, I can also give you a round of applause. But your words aren’t concrete and that it creates an unwanted paradox. Would it be harder to think and process if people really thought of fixing what is broken, and breaking the stigma of oblivion?”

“You might sound like a philosopher but you’re likely the only one contradicting yourself.”

“That might be true in your case but for me, it’s completely normal. It’s a battle of perspective, without any grip on common sense itself.”

And to that extent, I held onto my seat, knowing that he was just messing with me. Incidentally, I faced the cold, soggy Tonkotsu ramen with a tablespoon of frown…

“Do you know? There are two ways of life. Either you live in awareness of your own insignificance, or you live in awareness of the insignificance of the world itself.”

“That’s something I’ve read in a book before…Wouldn’t that just be plain plagiarizing?”

“It’s a common philosophy.”

“You didn’t mince words in that. It’s a surprise.”

Put in the trouble of losing trust with the human error who’s in front of me, I just went with how he’s shaping the conversation, of whatever reasoning I have that it left its bars to interrogate the person.

“So which are you among the two?” I asked him.

He replied, “I live in awareness of the insignificance of the world. How about you?”

Not missing a beat, I smirked to answer─“I live aware of both my own insignificance and the insignificance of the world.”