Know thy self, part two.

A friend just sent me a personality test, and my immediate response to my results were: objection! Not so! I, of course, wanted to be everything—feeler and thinker, sensor and intuitor, extrovert and introvert. I did not think I wanted to be a judger, but the test said it was so, and when I read the descriptions, I decided it was right, even if I didn’t like the terminology used. (It turns out none of the terms mean quite what they sound like to me.)

Having already been thinking a lot about who, at my core, I am—that is, what truths I hold to be self-evident for my own existence—the personality test results did underscore something that I think is extremely true of me: when it comes to feeling versus thinking, evaluating situations based on ethics rather than logic, basing decisions on emotional value rather than intellect or “what makes most sense,” this test pegged me. I am a feeler through and through. I realize that this is why I was able to listen all week to a beautiful song about the blues and have it not lull me deeper into sadness but lift me right out of it. I am happy to have left many a cup of growing-cold tea around this world. I don’t view it as a loss when I offer emotion and it gets given back or set aside. I don’t view it as a loss when I give of myself to a person who cannot, due to logistics of timing or place, prior commitments or prior baggage, offer as much back. For while I know that I risk getting hurt when I unhesitatingly reach out to someone, despite all known obstacles, and pour that cup of tea, I am certain that doing this drains nothing from me. The teapot is not filled with something that depletes itself; rather, it contains a substance that grows more powerful as it trickles back down the spout and into the belly—and there begins to steep again.