I am a self-proclaimed Myers-Briggs expert. I diagnose people with their four letters like it's my job. I'm a melancholic-phlegmatic (diagnosed by another personality test: the four temperaments.) All of these tests point to some overlapping truths about myself: I'm a not-so-secret romantic, deep-feeler, and have a tendency to be overly critical.
And what else have I learned through years of these tests and some (hopefully) honest self- reflection? I get a sense of people rather quickly. I've gotten somewhat prideful in this ability, actually. I get vibes, and I share vibes with other people. Scientific? No. Experiential? Yes. Reliable? Enough that I can brag about it. When the vibes turn out right, I get all Adrian Monk, and I think: 'It's a blessing and a curse.'
But really this blessing has turned out to be a curse because of the way I've used it.
Yes, I can usually tell when someone is insecure when I first meet them. I can tell when there's a wound on their mind. I observe shallowness, and I immediately file it in my List of People w/ Certain Characteristics to be Avoided. I don't really realize I've made that list in my mind until later, but made it I have. Because I pick up on select things, I think I've picked up on the whole person. What a joke. (And this blog isn't even touching on the times when I'm just plain 180 degrees off.)
I cannot continue to brag about my gift of understanding people while simultaneously dismissing the whole person in front of me because I've intuited he has such and such a trait. I obviously didn't intuit the fact that all people long for something: to be understood truly for who they are, not for characteristics that compose them. How prideful of me to not realize that even the people with the most awful characteristics could (and do) have a depth that I cannot even begin to fathom.
As St. Augustine says: 'Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.'
I beg you, sisters, to apply this quote to your neighbor, and to always listen more closely than your intuition can infer.
The Lord gives some of us the gift of understanding (and buzzfeed personality tests to tell us so), but it is not to be used to dismiss the complexities of the person standing before us. It is to be used to start a conversation that only the other can complete.
Love boldly and humbly.
Blessings,
Paula
