darn, no tragedy

When I researched my ancestry in the past (for family trees for school or for the genealogical website Geni), I was anxious, yes anxious, to find tragedy or strangeness. I found a little:

Mary Jane Shannon (my great-great grandmother) was married seven times and gave all of her children away to the Arnold family in Illinois. She drowned in a creek.

Mary Whittenburg (another great-great grandmother) left her husband and family and moved to Wichita in the late 1800s to become a prostitue.

(I see a pattern with women named Mary leaving their families in the late 19th century. Remind me to never name my child Mary.)

Daniel Lentz (great-great grandfather) died in a house fire in 1902.

His mother, Catherine, (great-great-great grandmother) was a full-blood Pawnee living in Arlington, Kansas.

John Kliewer (great-great-great grandfather) was a much-in-demand coffin maker in Russia. Then he was a Dietrich Gaeddart immigrant to America in 1874.

This generation lags in drama. I mean, my family has so much drama--just like yours, I'm sure--but there have been no fires or great abandonments.

INFP

(Introverted Feeling with Intuition)

"People with INFP preferences have a great deal of warmth, but may not show it until they know a person well. They keep their warm side inside, like a fur-lined coat. They are very faithful to duties and obligations related to ideas or people they care about. They take a very personal approach to life, judging everything by their inner ideals and personal values.

"They stick to their ideals with passionate conviction. Although their inner loyalties and ideals govern their lives, they find these hard to talk about. Their deepest feelings are seldom expressed; their inner tenderness is masked by a quiet reserve.

"In everyday matters they are tolerant, open-minded, understanding, flexible, and adaptable. But if their inner loyalties are threatened, they will not give an inch. Except for their work's sake, INFPs have little wish to impress or dominate. The people they prize the most are those who take the time to understand their values and the goals they are working toward.

"Their main interest lies in seeing the possibilities beyond what is present, obvious, or known. They are twice as good when working at a job they believe in, since their feeling puts added energy behind their efforts. They want their work to contribute to something that matters to them--human understanding, happiness, or health. They want to have a purpose beyond their paycheck, no matter how big the check. They are perfectionists whenever they care deeply about something.

"INFPs are curious about new ideas and tend to have insight and long-range vision. Many are interested in books and language and are likely to have a gift of expression; with talent they may be excellent writers. They can be ingenious and persuasive on the subject of their enthusiasms, which are quiet but deep-rooted. They are often attracted to counseling, teaching, literature, art, science, or psychology.

"The problem for some INFPs is that they may feel such a contrast between their ideals and their actual accomplishments that they burden themselves with a sense of inadequacy. This can happen even when, objectively, they are being as effective as others. It is important for them to use their intuition to find ways to express their ideals; otherwise they will keep dreaming of the impossible and accomplish very little. If they find no channel for expressing their ideals, INFPs may become overly sensitive and vulnerable, with dwindling confidence in life and in themselves."

Do you want to know me? You pretty much do now. I took the Myers-Briggs test in middle school, and this is what it told me I was. I just found it in a folder marked "career stuff." As I read it, I was continually dropping my jaw lower. Yes, this is me. Wow, it even suggests writer? teacher? This is who I've been all along, huh? It's funny that I found this because today I realized something I knew but didn't really know: that I am diligent about keeping promises/deadlines for everyone and everything...except when I'm the one making promises to myself. It's like I don't take myself seriously enough or respect myself enough to hold myself accountable for goals or promises. This is a flaw. It's the reason the writing hasn't kept up. It's the reason I'm still flabby. It's the reason I keep spending more than I make. It's the reason I feel so disjointed.

That's a beauty. Realizing yourself by looking from the outside. This explains a lot, actually. Thank you, silly little career-personality-test-thing that I thought was cool but irrelevant a decade ago.

quoting SRS

I think, perhaps, I should have been born his daughter. Or niece. Or neighbor. Yes, neighbor, that would do.

"Meanwhile my eyes are also feasting. That is a favorite saying of my mother's: Something-or-other is a feast for the eyes. Like most proverbial sayings, it has been worn slick by too many tongues; and this is because, like most sayings, it names a truth. The truth here is one the mountain reminds me of: I have a hunger for nonhuman spaces, not out of any distaste for humanity, but out of a need to experience my humanness the more vividly by confronting stretches of the earth that my kind has had no part in making. I feast atop Mount June, on a jonathan apple, on vision."

--from "Feasting on Mountains" by Scott Russell Sanders.

This is how I feel when I'm in the mountains. This is why I crave it. I crave the silence, the big. I love the city (Chicago) because of the energy and beauty of water amid metal and glass. Man-made H&M and all those other shops and buildings, I love and wonder at. I feel there; I feel confidence and the power of doing. But I cannot feel awe and true power and understanding except in the nothing of man. The mountains, the true earth, that is home. Mountains and water running down hill, all down and life and the living of souls. My soul. Whatever soul I have is not in any city but sunlit sides of hills and mountains and over and under green.