I have always believed that all people start out with good intension’s, but at some point in their life the world shape them or side track them and they might end up on the wrong course. As humans we all want the same thing, we crave happiness and want to end our suffering which tend to be a major part of living. The Buddhists see life as mostly suffering and to be truly happy you have to come to terms with this. However, people get caught up in their lives and forget about what truly matters. We built up these frameworks in or societies how people should be and live their lives in order to be happy. You get an education, get a job, get a partner, get a house, get kids etc. When we have all that we are supposed to continue in the endless cycle of consumers consuming our mere existence. No wonder some people take the turn for the worst with all the pressure of what to make of your life. The question is why some people understand the underlying systems we have in our societies and why some don’t. Some form their world view from what they know around them, other questions it’s existence.

As an INFJ I always felt cursed both for better and worse when it comes to understanding the world and the people within it. In school as a kid I was very stubborn, I rejected all of the systems in place because I could see that many of them was useless and built on principles that would not help me learn anything. Of course I got into trouble because of this on many occasions, but as you know INFJs can be very persistent with what we think about things and you can’t influence us easily. We are not prone to conforming to others liking so to speak, if we don’t feel it also meets our own values.

In the social realm this became more painful the older I became since I started to realize that most people are selfish and shallow when it really counts. Many cannot see past themselves. It’s all a competition and value is not placed on the things that matters, like compassion for others. Among most life is an endless race where nobody realize that there is no finishing line. Winning won’t bring  you any closer to happiness. Of course seeing that much of how the world works early on made me unhappy as well. You see people following the same patterns knowing what their outcome will be even though you can’t help them.

What I’m trying to get at is since INFJs has such depth of empathy and understanding, we often see everything clearly when others do not. This might bring us great pain since people will hurt us without understanding it themselves. The way we see friendships and relationships other do not, people might not care about us the way we care about them. I guess when you realize this it is hard to find an angle on life that gives you a good outlook. Maybe this is simply why we are so prone to depression and sadness, we understand how life really is which is also why we understand the perfect ideal for things. We are good at connecting opposites and seeing everything that life is not might bring us much unhappiness.

On the other hand, this also gives us the talent to do many great things and to make the world a better place for  ourselves and others. We need to remember that we understand people for what they truly are. They might hurt us and others, but people are only a creation of what they know from their own lives. A tiger can’t hide it’s stripes so we can’t expect people to be what we are. What we all want in life is to feel happy, and when you approach people with the compassion knowing that all they want is basically the same as you, it is easier to remember that we all wish for the same world in the end. We just see it from different angles.

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