infp???

so yesterday was a breakthrough day for me.... maybe i should pause and say i have missed the blogging world. between sappy, soggy love notes to my fiance in china and my shameless facebook addiction, the growing list of favorite blogs to read and the endless toil of school, somehow my own blogging continues to wane. i can only hope that once jev returns and life is slightly less cyber-based i might actually desire to spend a few guiltless minutes indulging in my beloved web log on a more regular basis.

anyways, as for breakthoughs. yesterday we had our naturopathic counseling class and we discussed jungian typology. most of our class had taken an online brief survey similar to myers-briggs and the instructor took a gross poll of the class to guage the predominant typology of the class.

this was an intriguing exercise for me to observe as i have always been a very deeply rooted infp... even our brief survey produced the unsurprising results: intoverted, intuition-driven, feeling and perceiving. (the anti-type (not antithesis) would be extroverted, sensing, thinking and judging). i thought the predominant type would be enfp (the 'champion' archetype) but was quite surprised to find that when the instructor had us raise our hands the majority of the room was more in the introverted category. i have always felt slightly apart from my classmates -- often unsure if its my background, personailty, dorkiness... (he he okay, maybe all of the above) but i have always felt, surely, that most were at least more extroverted, or if not more extroverted, probably more thinkers. i wasn't surprised that most of us were intuitors but once again i was surprised to find out that the majority of the group were, in fact, fellow feelers! and so, perhaps we are not as different as i might think (or should i say 'feel?'). but it was the final category that set us apart (and strongly, i might add -- there were only a small few of us rasing our hands of perception). our intructor excitedly reported that every year he has conducted this poll the results have been the same, 'without fail, bastyr students are strongly infj' he remarked. hmmmmmmm. and then it all came crashing together. the rest of the afternoon i was fuming at those silly judgers -- 'aha!' i thought to myself. 'now it all makes sense.' the maddeningly competitive study sessions, the ridiculous type-a scrutiny, the feeling that i am never quite measuring up that NO ONE is ever quite measuring up. and began railing against the j's!!! blaming them for everything from the bad traffic to the war in iraq. no ground is safe from the j's and their suffocating ways. the last hour of lecture and an entire lecture in pediatrics was not enough to quench the steam. as i walked out to my car three hours after the cataclysmic awakening i still found myself muttering about all the j-ness of bastyr. and that is when i caught a glimps of my tensed up shoulders, my wrinkled forhead and inverted smile in the reflection of someone's black toyota prius (undoubtly belonging to a j)... when i realized the perceiver is reigning down judgment on the judgers!!! he he he. i giggled aloud and collected my terribly embittered self. there i was standing in my little infj-ruled world, hardly able to perceive what i was becoming in my reaction against everythink i hate to love and love to hate. in fact, it is not at all another's inability to be like me that i should be concerned with, but my own experiences of myself. i cannot say that i have suddenly come to a place of understanding and wholehearted appreciation for others' j-ness... as we speak i am in the midst of working out my differences with my incredibly j'ed roomate, whom i love dearly, but am often struggling to be heard by.

i would conclude this entry by exclaiming 'infp's unite!' but seeing as we are less than 1% of the population, i am not sure we would have a very impressive turnout... which might not be so good for our self-doubting tendencies ;o)

i am getting married in less than four months and although i am certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that i am marrying my soul-mate, my life's one and only, i cannot help but be frightened by own self-unawareness. it seems i have so much to learn about being myself in this world and i hardly know how to be that person with another. i have a handful of precious, dear dear friends. jewels. they see me for who i am even when i cannot. i am amazed that they can love me so well, that they can hold my melencholy moments alongside my spontaneous attacks of charismatic eclecticism with such unopposed love and acceptance.

i wish i knew myself better, that i could explain these strange tendencies of mine, but perhaps that is part of the mysteriuos wonder and joy of marriage. to love without condition is love without having to have all the facts beforehand.