Showerpress

So I was standing in the queue for dinner, when the person in front of me takes around 8 pieces of fruit. I disapprovingly glanced from the now-empty bowl to the very full arms of this guy – are you really taking all of that fruit?

wot? wot? wot?

Err, i said are you taking all of those bananas?

wot? wot?

Ah nevermind, it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, it’s fine – really. Nothing…

/man gives me banana.

Umm – thanks! Thank you :)

…

/other_man from the same table menacingly gives me a banana, as we motion to sit down somewhere else…

*nonplussed*

~

I hope I haven’t started some kind of banana warfare. It’s like when the Mafia spare your life – they’re not being kind, they’re just being manipulative. Well whatever, I only wanted the one banana so I eat that and left the other on the tray. Interesting stuff, right?

Yeah so anyway it occurred to me later that he probably wasn’t stealing all that fruit for himself. I assumed that he was an aggressive alpha-male, selfishly taking whatever he could. Since we witnessed the great yogurt heist (another story – interested?), I’ve come to expect this individualistic opportunism.

I bet he was just taking the fruit for the rest of his friends on the table – the success of their large friendship group depends upon individuals ‘unluckily’ being picked to sacrifice their time or effort for the many. When it’s your turn, you have to man up and humiliate yourself. Normally though, you get to order people around to do your bidding. I think that’s how those power-hungry social circles operate.

So it may be ‘more likely’ in your eyes that he was just hungry for some extra fruit, but that’s not how I see it.

This could have been avoided if I’d only perceived properly first time around, and saw his actions for what they were. Or at least withheld judgment until I could properly assess his motives.

~

I think this ties into what makes happy and unhappy INFPs. I’ve recently lapsed into judging people as unpleasant by default. Apart from being pretty arrogant, this isn’t fair on the complexity of peoples’ intentions. People are great, unmoved movers in this beautiful cosmic mess. I’m people too.

If I’ve correctly understood the INFP personality type, we function best when we are conscious of our extroverted intuition. This basically means to acknowledge and encourage that sense of just ‘feeling’ what is going on in a situation, and trusting that feeling.

Further, we feel guilty when not seeing the best in people. I don’t mean guilty in a moral sense, which would perhaps be detrimental. Just an overall perception that we are not acting in accordance with our own internal set of absolute moral truths.

Anyway, I’ll stop before this gets even more introspective and self-obsessed.

<3