INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

“Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare to express themselves as we did. The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive’—the honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.” —Sophie Scholl

Continue reading “Sophie Scholl and the White Rose”

At the age of 21, Sophie Scholl was guillotined by the Nazis for her involvement in The White Rose.

I’d been living in London when my world turned upside down and I’d had to come home. By the time my plane landed back in Sydney, all I had left was a carry on bag full of clothes and a world of troubles. No one to welcome me back, no place to call home. I was a tourist in my hometown.

Standing there in the arrivals terminal, watching other passengers meeting their waiting friends and family, with open arms and smiling faces, hugging and laughing together, I wanted someone out there to be waiting for me. To be happy to see me. To smile at me. To hug me.

So I got some cardboard and a marker and made a sign. I found the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city and held that sign aloft, with the words “FREE HUGS” on both sides.

And, for 15 minutes, people just stared right through me. The first person who stopped tapped me on the shoulder and told me how her dog had just died that morning. How that morning had been the one year anniversary of her only daughter dying in a car accident. How what she needed now, when she felt most alone in the world, was a hug. I got down on one knee, we put our arms around each other and, when we parted, she was smiling.

Everyone has problems and, for sure, mine haven’t compared. But to see someone who was once frowning smile, even for a moment, is worth it every time.

—Juan Mann

“There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And, while I don’t expect you to save the world, I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary, and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair, and disrespect.” —Nikki Giovanni

This Illiterate Brazilian’s Home Speaks Volumes
By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

Sao Goncalo, Brazil—Carlos Leite can barely read a word, but books revolutionized his life. Two years ago, he was doing construction work for a man who was about to toss out six thick, red encyclopedias. Leite asked whether he could have them instead. Thus a dream was born.

Within days, he hit the pavement, knocking on doors, begging people for more unwanted books. No contribution was too small, too big or too arcane. Skeptical members of Leite’s cycling club were dragooned into helping him collect donations.

His collection quickly multiplied. The original six volumes turned into 100, then 1,000. Soon, his humble home was bursting with 5,000 books of all types—worn classics, chemistry textbooks, dog-eared thrillers.

To Leite, though, nearly all the books are mysteries. Born into a poor family, he dropped out of school after third grade and, at 51, is practically illiterate. But books, he knows, are the gateway to a life of greater possibility and more promise than his own. It might be too late for me, a working man, he reasoned, but not for others.

So bloomed the passion that has consumed Leite’s free time over the last two years: transforming his home into a public library, free and open to all in this poverty-stricken neighborhood outside Rio de Janeiro.

Continue reading…

Many of us were children or not yet born, but there was a time when having a social conscience superseded personal wealth and popularity in sports, a time when empowerment among elite athletes had nothing to do with economics. You either believed in a cause and took action or you hushed up. In 1968, against the wish of his own nation [Australia], Peter Norman did something.

“I did the only thing I believed was right,” Norman said over a beer six years ago. “I asked what they wanted me to do to help.”

In the photo, he wears a badge identical to those worn by Smith and Carlos, identifying their Olympic Project for Human Rights. But Norman’s participation was more than a token. “While he didn’t raise a fist, he did lend a hand,” was how Smith explained it.

“Any other white guy, I don’t think he would have had the courage to go through with it,” Carlos said yesterday. “Our lives were threatened. We were being demonized in the media. People were saying we wanted the destruction of society instead of what we really wanted, equal rights. I just don’t think most white individuals would have been strong enough to make that commitment.

“At least me and Tommie had each other when we came home,” he added. “When Peter went home, he had to deal with a nation by himself. He never wavered, never denied that he was up there with us for a purpose and he never said ‘I’m sorry’ for his involvement. That’s indicative of who the man was.”

The Americans discussed their plan with Norman, then a 26-year-old physical education teacher and Salvation Army officer, before the ceremony. When Carlos realised he had forgotten his black gloves, Norman suggested the two share Smith’s pair. He then asked what he could do to support them, and Carlos managed to get an additional badge, which Norman attached to his track suit, over his heart. After the ceremony, Norman explained himself simply: “I believe that every man is born equal and should be treated that way.”

“I couldn’t see why a black man wasn’t allowed to drink out of the same water fountain or sit in the same bus or go to the same schools as a white guy,” Norman said. “That was just social injustice that I couldn’t do anything about from where I was, but I certainly abhorred it.”

[…]

Norman last saw Smith and Carlos last year, when San Jose State University, California, unveiled a statue, based on the photo, of its two alumni. Typically, he downplayed his involvement. “People don’t realise that they sacrificed their lives for a cause they believed in, and it was peaceful and non-violent,” he said. “I was glad I was with them.”

Read Full Article: Peter Norman
Read Full Article: Clenched Fists, Helping Hand

Forgetting to be Human
by Dick Staub

We have forgotten what it means to be human; the evidence abounds. Read the paper, weep, resist, pray, and then live a fully human life. Blessed with extraordinary spiritual, intellectual, creative, moral and relational potential, we squander our greatness on lesser pursuits and wonder why we feel restless and empty.

While globally 30,000 children die daily due to malnutrition and preventable diseases, children in the West spend hours in elaborate, addictive “interactive virtual reality” games. Unaware of a sense of mission and meaning in real life, they turn to a vacuous wasteland of mind numbing entertainments and “not-pretty” diversions.

In the political arena, spin obfuscates reality and candidates spend billions of dollars to get elected so they can acquire or hang onto power, which is then wielded on behalf of large faceless special interest groups. In religion, the marketing machine produces converts attracted to religious celebrities who are generally workaholics unavailable to their families—saving the world and losing their own souls.

Whether in Hollywood, politics, or religion the story is the same—a young person with passion and vision, unable to discern purity of motive from a raw, naked desire for power or notoriety and fame, enters the fray. Early successes fuel the quest—trade-offs must be made. Must be at this meeting or that, must sacrifice this daughter’s soccer game, son’s piano recital, anniversary dinner with the spouse. The noble cause trumps the noble life until the choices become a way of life and then there is no life worth living.

Dulling the pain requires stimulants, entertainments, diversions, sensations—“let me feel” is our cry. The pure feelings produced by love, family, friends, neighbors, or a walk on a sunny day or in a light rain are displaced by cheap, imitative, virtual or “extreme” experiences. Spiritual humans become sensate humans enslaved to our substandard lives, needing to pay the mortgage, unable to disentangle from the consumerist webs. The mighty fall—evangelicals being no exception.

One day a trumpet heard by the entire planet will sound, but we’ve waited 2,000 years and we are fools to believe that that day will be the beginning of the promised abundant life. In the now, we who know listen for and hear the music today. We dance a different dance—we are the resistance, we are summoned to be the creators, we see the truth and say it. We are called to be fully human.

Fully human, we embody the words penned by British poet Arthur O’ Shaughnessy:

We are the music makers.
We are the dreamers of dreams.
We are the movers and shakers.
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

“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

“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

David Foster Wallace: Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly shitty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally-retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally-retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what’s always distinguished bad writing—flat characters, a narrative world that’s cliched and not recognizably human, etc.—is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world.

Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?

In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies C.P.R. to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness.

Fiction’s about what it is to be a human being. If you operate, which most of us do, from the premise that there are things about the contemporary United States that make it distinctively hard to be a real human being, then maybe half of fiction’s job is to dramatize what it is that makes it tough. The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still “are” human beings, now.

I just think that fiction that isn’t exploring what it means to be human today isn’t art.

We’ve all got this “literary” fiction that simply monotones that we’re all becoming less and less human, that presents characters without souls or love, characters who really are exhaustively describable in terms of what brands of stuff they wear, and we all buy the books and go like “golly, what a mordantly effective commentary on contemporary materialism!”

But we already “know” U.S. culture is materialistic. This diagnosis can be done in about two lines. It doesn’t engage anybody. What’s engaging and artistically real is, taking it as axiomatic that the present is grotesquely materialistic, how is it that we as human beings still have the capacity for joy, charity, genuine connections, for stuff that doesn’t have a price? And can these capacities be made to thrive? And if so, how, and if not why not?

The magic of fiction is that it addresses and antagonizes the loneliness that dominates people.

The other day, I listened to my daughter, 8, explain to my son, 6, how she was going to save the world. Her plan, as she tells it, is to close all the meat packing plants when she grows up. She’s going to make mass butchering of animals illegal and, likely, throw everyone who has ever worked at a packing plant in jail.

It was at about that point when the “voice of reason” entered the conversation. I’m not even going to attempt to analyze exactly where this voice of reason comes from for the moment but it was, quite obviously, being channeled through me.

“Now Maddie,” I heard myself saying, “Do you really think it would be fair to actually throw people in jail for working at a packing house? People need jobs, honey. People need to feed their families.”

And her reply was exactly what mine would have been at the age of eight.

“So. People should get jobs that don’t involve torturing and killing animals.”

But the “voice of reason” went on. “You can’t punish people for it. Everyone has to make a living. And I know it seems cruel, all those poor cattle squashed into those tiny pens, spending their final hours…”

She was muttering by that time. A quick glance in the rear-view mirror and I could see her little arms folded across her chest, her brow furrowed, “…just like killing people…no different…why people think they can be so mean…”

I shut that “voice of reason” up as I watched that fire of passion flicker and dim. It was as if she boxed it up and pulled it tight against her, hiding it from people like me, people who would encourage her to be “reasonable” and just accept that sometimes life is as life is, that bad things happen for a reason and there’s no use in asking people to change.

We rode in silence for far too long.

“You know,” I finally said, “You’re right. Meat packing plants are bad on a number of levels and I’m sorry I said those things to you. I hope you do grow up and shut them down. It’s people like you who will make the world a better place for those animals and for the people who work in those plants.”

I wonder how often we give up on a dream, a goal, a plan to make the world a better place because so many “voices of reason” swirl around us, telling us to be cautious, be fair, be considerate, be realistic. How many times do we succumb to “reasonableness” before we cease to dream altogether? Why are we afraid to think differently? Why are we content to follow the crowd even when we don’t seem to like where the crowd is taking us? Why do we keep our mouths shut in fear of offending rather than speak out on the subjects that offend us?

Why do we?

Why do I?

Source

On a March afternoon at our home in Pasadena, Calif., about 35 boxes of vitamins and iron tablets blocked the front hallway. The dining room table was heaped high with packages of embroidery thread, scissors, crayons, work gloves and eye drops. Still, there was more to collect.

Our local garment district turned out to be the best place to buy thimbles in bulk. A stockbroker donated 100 small flashlights, penknives and calculators with the Morgan Stanley logo. We scoured sporting goods outlets for deflated soccer balls and bought 20 pairs of sunglasses at a 99-cent store. If the cashiers were perplexed, they hid it well.

Not surprisingly, the logistics of hauling about 350 pounds of supplies to Africa are complex and are likely to be further complicated by heightened airline security. A week after our scavenger hunt began, we finally loaded up five supersize sports duffle bags, paid about $200 in extra baggage fees (the vitamins alone weighed in at 200 pounds) and boarded a flight to Niger.

That was the start of a two-week trip to a nation that the New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof recently called “the most wretched country in the world,” and a venture that grew out of a question our 16-year-old daughter, Leslie Brian, posed after hearing yet another news account of suffering in Africa.

“So, is there anything we can do about it?” she had asked.

New York Times: In Niger, Using Vacation to Help the World’s Poor

“INFPs are very aware of social injustice and empathize with the underdog. Their empathy for the underdog and hyper-awareness of social injustice makes them extremely compassionate and nurturing…”*

“A key word for this type is ‘empathy.’ INFP children will often be the ones to ask their parents why they didn’t give the homeless man spare change, or why that woman is crying.”*

One day, the father of an extremely wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the purpose of exposing him to the lives of poor people. They spent a few days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return, the father asked his son, “How was the trip?”

“It was great, Dad.”

“Did you see how poor people live?” the father asked.

“Oh yeah,” said the son.

“So, tell me, what did you learn?”

The son answered, “I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We have servants who serve us but they serve others. We buy our food but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us but they have friends to protect them.”

The boy’s father was speechless.

Then his son added, “Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are.”

…

“As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, materialists and idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of thought and will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1842)