INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

“And let me tell you something I’ve never told a soul. My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves…we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment, we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn’t find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lit.

“If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold and defenceless, is capable of providing that food. […] That’s why it’s important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can put out the most intense fire, with results we’re familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it’s easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished. […] You must, of course, take care to light the matches one at a time. If a powerful emotion should ignite them all at once they would provide a splendour so dazzling that it would illuminate far beyond what we can normally see; and then a brilliant tunnel would appear before our eyes, revealing the path we forgot the moment we were born, and summoning us to regain the divine origin we had lost. The soul ever longs to return to the place from which it came, leaving the body lifeless…”

—Laura Esquivel, “Like Water for Chocolate”

“Cynics are only happy in making the world as barren for others as they have made it for themselves.” —George Meredith

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And, while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” —Jack Kerouac

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” —Richard Bullock

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” —George Bernard Shaw

“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.” —Helen Keller

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” —Jack Kerouac

“Yes, I can spew. Yes, I can rant. Yes, I can rave. Yes, I can go out of my way to articulate in shimmering, twinkling, glittery, diamond-clear detail the story of what’s going wrong. But I don’t want to do it the old way.”

Continue reading “Truth Rant”

“Maybe I was hoping for a little insight, maybe I was hoping to gain some lacking spirituality or sense of good will. Mostly, though, I think I was looking for some hope. The older I become—the more news I watch, the more books I read, and the more I look around—I see the world falling apart. People are angry, scared, hurt. There are wars going on, violent crimes being committed; people are feeling a sense of sadness and desperation that you can almost feel in the air.”

Continue reading “A Lesson on Happiness”

“Concern should drive us into action, not into depression.” —Pythagoras

“Why was my dad’s funeral the saddest day of my life? When I gave everybody the opportunity to say something about my dad at his funeral, nobody said a word. I was too numb to think of anything to say. I was shocked that none of his ten brothers and sisters—or his mom—said a word.”

Continue reading “How Will People Remember You?”

• “I did not want my tombstone to read, ‘She kept a really clean house.’” —Ann Richards

• “Asked once what she might have done differently had she known she was going to be a one-term governor, Richards grinned. ‘Oh, I would probably have raised more hell.’” —New York Times

• “Ann Richards was, actually, what men and women alike would call a great Broad. She wasn’t a Role Model, she was herself! Gutsy, warm, smart, stylish, and really funny. She could clean a closet or clean your clock, make your lunch or eat it. She lost and won some tough battles and it showed in her dazzling weathered face. What a dame!” —Unknown

• “She was a symbol for every little girl who wanted to grow up and do great things. My daughter met the governor when she was only four and a friendship was born. Richards was always interested in Amanda and when she left office she began to write her letters at the end of the year to tell her what had been going on in her life and to admonish my daughter to read and study and dream big. When Amanda was confirmed in her church, the governor sent her a beautiful piece of jewelry and, when she graduated from high school, a crystal bowl with a sterling silver top was delivered to our house. Amanda’s name, high school, date of graduation, and the governor’s name were all engraved on the underside. The governor had recently written Amanda a note urging her to attend a university outside of Texas and go see more of the world, which she has done, in part, because she got a fine recommendation letter from the former governor of Texas to send in with her student application. The course of my daughter’s life has been positively influenced by this woman of great strength and determination. And I am pleased.” —James Moore

Molly Ivins:

At a long-ago political do at Scholz Garten in Austin, everybody who was anybody was there meetin’ and greetin’ at a furious pace. A group of us got the tired feet and went to lean our butts against a table at the back wall of the bar.

Perched like birds in a row were Bob Bullock, then state comptroller, moi, Charles Miles, the head of Bullock’s personnel department, and Ms. Ann Richards. Bullock, 20 years in Texas politics, knew every sorry, no good sumbitch in the entire state. Some old racist judge from East Texas came up to him, ‘Bob, my boy, how are you?”

Bullock said, “Judge, I’d like you to meet my friends: This is Molly Ivins with the Texas Observer.”

The judge peered up at me and said, “How yew, little lady?”

Bullock, “And this is Charles Miles, the head of my personnel department.”

Miles, who is black, stuck out his hand, and the judge got an expression on his face as though he had just stepped into a fresh cowpie. He reached out and touched Charlie’s palm with one finger, while turning eagerly to the pretty, blonde, blue-eyed Ann Richards. “And who is this lovely lady?”

Ann beamed and replied, “I am Mrs. Miles.”

“And the television executives told me when I was in Baltimore that I was just—too much. I was too big and I was too black. They told me that I was too engaged, that I was too emotional. I was too much for the news so they put me on a talk show one day just to run out my contract. And that was the beginning of my story. So, I say, even when things are difficult, be grateful. Honor your calling, don’t worry about how successful you will be. Don’t worry about it. Focus on how significant you can be in service and the success will take care of itself. And always take a stand for yourself. Your values—you—are defined by what you stand for. Your integrity is not for sale.”*

The universe is always trying to get your attention. Sometimes it starts out—any major problem you encounter—as a whisper. By the time it gets to be a storm, you’ve had a pebble knock you upside the head; you’ve had a brick; you’ve had a brick wall; you’ve had a house fall down. And, before you know it, you are in the eye of the storm.

But, long before you are in the eye of the storm, you’ve had many warnings, like little clues. So now my goal in life is not to have to hit the eye of the storm, but to catch it in the whisper. To get it the first time. I think the thing, the one thing that has allowed me to certainly achieve both material success and spiritual success, is the ability to listen to my instinct. I call it my inner voice. It doesn’t matter what you call it—nature, instinct, higher power. It’s the ability to understand the difference between what your heart is saying and what your head is saying.

Continue reading…

“Who am I? It matters not that you know who I am; it is of little importance. This clay garment is one of a pilgrim journeying in the name of peace. It is what you cannot see that is so very important.” —Peace Pilgrim

From 1953 to 1981, a silver haired woman calling herself only “Peace Pilgrim” walked more than 25,000 miles on a personal pilgrimage for peace.

“When I started out, my hair had started to turn to silver. My friends thought I was crazy. There was not one word of encouragement from them. They thought I would surely kill myself, walking all over. But that didn’t bother me. I just went ahead and did what I had to do. They didn’t know that with inner peace I felt plugged into the source of universal energy, which never runs out. There was much pressure to compromise my beliefs, but I would not be dissuaded. Lovingly, I informed my well-meaning friends of the existence of two widely divergent paths in life and of the free will within all to make their choice. There is a well-worn road which is pleasing to the senses and gratifies worldly desires, but leads to nowhere. And there is the less traveled path, which requires purifications and relinquishments, but results in untold blessings.”

Continue reading “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, Peace Pilgrim Website

Do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I’ve heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered, concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments.

The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is ‘we were made for these times’. Yes. For years, we’ve been learning, practicing, training and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able crafts in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind. Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest.

For many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over brought down by naivete, by lack of love, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially, we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection.

Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered can be restored to life again. In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by persevering with what’s outside our reach, what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That’s spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take ‘everyone on earth’ to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

—Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

“The souls of people, on their way to earth-life, pass through a room full of lights; each takes a taper—often only a spark—to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls, by rare fortune, are detained longer—and have time to grab a handful of tapers, which they weave into a torch. These are the torch-bearers of humanity—its poets, seers, and saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, toward the light. They are the law-givers and saviors, the light-bringers, way-showers and truth-tellers and, without them, humanity would lose its way in the dark.” —Plato