On page 461 of Nixon: A Life, Jonathan Aitken states:
"...Nixon
abroad had a personal style that was far more assured, confident and
dignified than the image he portrayed at home. At close quarters with
his fellow Americans he could be socially inept and visually insecure.
Yet when travelling overseas, as if by the wave of a magic wand, he
discarded his domestic complexes and resentments. From the moment of
arrival on foreign soil he exuded strength and often warmth. A small
part of this transformation may have been due to the realisation that he
was usually being welcomed by people who admired him for his humble
origins; who neither knew nor cared whether Whittier was an Ivy League
university; and whose respect for his abilities went back a long time to
the days when he had first begun to acquire his detailed knowledge
about the affairs of their own country."
It's good when a person
can find his or her niche, isn't it? I long for social settings in
which interaction with people is not such an uphill battle. Is it all
right to have that kind of longing, or does that feed into any notion I
may have that my social struggles are always somebody else's
fault----that the problem is my environment, not me? Well, I don't want
to get to the point where I am only blaming others without taking a
good hard look at myself and what I may be doing wrong. At the same
time, there are some people and places that are more accepting and less
judgmental than others. That's just a fact. I am not overly optimistic
that I will be socially accepted in those sorts of settings,
mind you, but perhaps I could thrive better in those settings than in other settings.