Introverts and the Enigmatic Act of Gazing Out a Window
Let’s consider a common habit of introverts: gazing out a window.
During one of those half-random Internet searches that land you in strange territory, I happened upon a parent’s blog post describing a tense parent/teacher conference. A contemptuous high-school teacher cited the blogger’s son looking out the window as evidence of the kid being disrespectful and unprepared for class. The father asked his son, who was present at the meeting, why he was looking out the window. “I was thinking,” was the reply. At this, the teacher rolled his eyes.
“Oh boy,” I thought. “Who is disrespecting whom?”
I immediately thought back to seventh grade. Because my name begins with “Y,” my assigned desk was usually in the last row. My teachers rarely walked around the classroom. Thus, a teacher might not have seen that I passed most of my time in class either daydreaming in the direction of the window or looking down, below my desk, where I held the latest novel I was surreptitiously reading. Or maybe the teachers saw and didn’t care because I wasn’t bothering anyone else and always got “As” on homework.
True, looking out the window can indicate disengagement, but in what world does that represent disrespect? A student looking out the window doesn’t disrupt the class or directly challenge the teacher’s authority. Indeed, we might consider it the most respectful form of disengagement, compared with, say, joking behind the teacher’s back or shooting spitballs. And perhaps it’s a symptom of the teacher not sufficiently inspiring the students in his charge.
Then I thought about the conversational style of introverts and remembered another possible interpretation of someone looking out the window. Extroverts tend to think through an issue by talking, while introverts often prefer to think things through on our own. Instead of thinking while we speak, we listen, think, then talk. During a conversation, an introvert might look down, at a blank wall or out a window as the next best thing to thinking alone. That brief switch helps us to recall information, craft a careful response or make a decision. It’s a thinking strategy in harmony with how our minds naturally work.
Numerous body-language articles online state that looking out the window during a conversation shows that you’re bored, distracted or mentally in another world. (For example, here and here.) For an introvert, I don’t believe that’s a fair reading. Perhaps you’re so interested that you want to pause and consider closely what was just said. Or perhaps looking away from the scene helps you access thoughts very much related to what is being spoken about. The boy in my opening anecdote could very well have been thinking in an engaged and relevant way rather than completely tuning out his teacher.
Here are a few other ideas on how looking out the window can be helpful and not disrespectful:
It gives your brain a break, which can restore concentration. Scientists say that human brains have a 90-minute work/rest cycle. At night, this causes you to dream around every hour and a half. During the day, your attention flags at the same interval unless you give it a rest.
Looking out the window can help calm an emotional upset, functioning as a mini-meditation, a restabilizer or a reset.
It can give you access to your deeper, more intuitive or more creative self. Many historic scientific discoveries came about not when someone was attentively focused but when their brain was idling.
If the window looks out on grass, gardens or a forest, it can provide a beneficial dose of “nature bathing.” Even as little as three to five minutes of looking out at greenery has a measurable effect of reducing physiological stress and boosting one’s immune system.
Maybe you now want to locate a nearby window and ponder all of this?