INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

“It was scary as a child because there was nobody to relate to. Neither my auntie nor my friends, nor anybody, could ever see what I did. It was very, very scary and the only contact I had was reading about an Oscar Wilde, or a Dylan Thomas, or a van Gogh—all those books that my auntie had that talked about their suffering because of their visions. Because of what they saw, they were tortured by society for trying to express what they were.

“In one way or another, I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things people didn’t see. I always saw things in a hallucinatory way. This thing gave me a chip on the shoulder; but, on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted. Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this lunatic musician. But I cannot be what I am not.

“You make your own dream. That’s the Beatles’ story, isn’t it? That’s what I’m saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders. Don’t expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself. That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called ‘holy’ and worshipped for the covers and not the contents, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up.

“It’s fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened by it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that—it’s all illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it’s unknown and it’s plain sailing. Everything is unknown—then you’re ahead of the game. That’s what it is. Right?”

—John Lennon

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“It’s easy to make fun of the simple, soft-spoken man and the ‘unsophisticated’ personality that is reflected in the show and its characters. But behind everything is, in fact, a true sophistication. One that knows what children need and an amazing ability to let his real caring come through.

“In a very touching moment, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In receiving this award, he did not brag of his accomplishments. In his acceptance speech, he asked the audience to take ‘10 seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are, those who have cared about you and wanted the best for you in life. Ten seconds. I’ll watch the time.’

“Ten seconds of silence while accepting a major award…but it was the audience who began thinking, just as he had told them to. When the time was up and Mister Rogers told them how pleased those people would be to know how highly they were thought of, tears were on the faces of many of those hard-nosed show-biz types in the audience. He could really get to your feelings—and make you happy that he did.”*

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The Gere Foundation*

Richard Gere: My Journey as a Buddhist

“This planet can’t exist anymore unless all peoples are taken into account.” —Richard Gere

Thoreau once said that every writer’s duty was to give “first and last, a simple and sincere account of their own life.” More than his sage words reached 26-year old singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan. In preparing the songs for her latest release, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy,” the Canadian songstress, perhaps inspired by Thoreau’s Walden experience, retreated to an isolated cabin in the mountains for nearly seven months of meditation and soul-searching. “It was just an amazing time for me,” she relates.

The results of her temporary sabbatical are intensely personal, emotionally rich, dark, moody, stirring songs. Listening to them, one can almost hear McLachlan going through cathartic changes, making discoveries about herself and her life. Indeed, several times during this interview, Sarah talked about the songwriting process as self-therapy. “It’s given me so much, as far as learning about myself,” she says. […]

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Why did you start writing poems?

Jewel: My ability to articulate verbally has never been that strong. I’ve always been a bit shy. For me, poetry was the way I became intimate with myself. To tell you the truth, I’ve felt uncomfortable being in pop music, especially because I’d really made a folk album. It was just me singing with an acoustic guitar. I don’t think it gets much more folk than that. The radio singles were remixed but the album was basically the three chords I knew when I was 19 and I was afraid the world would come to know me just the way the media portrayed me—as this Alaskan, raised by wolves in an igloo (laughs).

Songwriting is the one thing that probably comes the most natural to me more than anything else in my life. I can write a song easier than I can talk to a person. It’s fast the way the lyrics and melody come together. Usually, as long as a song is is how long it takes me to write a song.

I don’t care where I am. I don’t believe in people who can only write in the sunshine or in the window. This isn’t like you wet your finger and wait for the wind to blow right. You know when you’re a writer and I think you should be able to tap into that whether you are at an airport or hotel room or whatever. I think people who are insecure with their writing tend to need the light to be just right and the mood to be right for them to relax. I’ve been writing for a long time. It’s like second nature for me. I’m not as good at talking, but I can express myself very easily through my writing.

Singing in bars, and seeing what goes on in seedy dives from a very young age could have ruined me but, instead, it made me get fascinated by people and want to record people’s emotional history, see what motivates us, see what motivates me.

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“She wasn’t all that confident herself. She knew she had this gift with people, and she used it, wisely and generously. But in fact she felt, going into a big room of people, rather drawn to those who are feeling a bit nervous—rather as she was herself.” —Frances Shand Kydd

“It is not an easy thing to look this kind of trauma in the face and hear these stories. People would pour out their heart in gut wrenching detail…and she absorbed it, took it away with her and, by doing that, transacted some healing in the process. I think it’s because, a) she’s a survivor, so she understands survivors, and b) she understood traumatic events.” —Jerry White

“This is me, this is me!” exclaimed Princess Diana when she was read Dr. David Keirsey’s portrait of an INFP. In 1991, her masseur, Stephen Twigg, had given her a copy of ‘Please Understand Me’ to help her understand the spiritual journey she was undertaking. Her excitement came as Stephen read the Healer Idealist (INFP) portrait which, in part, says:

“Healers care deeply and passionately about a few special persons or a favorite cause and their fervent aim is to bring peace to the world and wholeness to themselves and their loved ones. They base their self-image on being seen as empathic, benevolent, and authentic. Often enthusiastic, they trust intuition, yearn for romance, seek identity, prize recognition and aspire to the wisdom of the sage.”

“According to a book released in the Summer of 2004 by Andrew Morton, Diana’s unofficial biographer, Diana was astonished and amazed by […]”

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“Life, says Erasmus’s Folly, is theater: we each have lines to say and a part to play. One kind of actor, recognizing that he is in a play, will go on playing nevertheless; another kind of actor, shocked to find he is participating in an illusion, will try to step off the stage and out of the play. The second actor is mistaken. For there is nothing outside the theater, no alternative life one can join instead. The show is, so to speak, the only show in town. All one can do is to go on playing one’s part, though perhaps with a new awareness, a comic awareness.” —JM Coetzee

“To his fellow recruits, he presented himself as nondescript: simple, bland, unassuming—just another face in the crowd. With his regular looks, he passed for ordinary so easily that most people believed him when he insisted, as he did so often in later years, that he was a ‘nothing,’ a ‘nobody,’ an ‘uncomplicated man with ordinary interests,’ although anyone who could attract attention to himself by being so sensitive and insecure had to be complicated.”*

“It was through his comic strip—an environment he controlled—that Schulz truly lived. Charlie Brown allowed Schulz to speak even less as himself in real life. Schulz’s characters became muses, creating life for themselves—and Schulz—in the process.”*