Curious Minds

Here’s an example of why personality stuff fascinates me. We’re doing our weekly shopping and as we are unloading our stuff, the person in front of us notices that the card reader is dead. Long story short, we had to move to a different aisle because without technology, life stops.

Lead to a long conversation in the car on the way home as my wife wondered what life would be life if the internet went down. And how you’d have to roll things back to the way it used to be when you paid cash for everything and stuff was recorded on paper. We decided that it would be “bad”. How bad? Well I thought of this of course.

Then, we are unloading the groceries and I moved a bag and the honeydew melon she had purchased rolled towards the end of the car. Naturally, that lead me to tell her that her honeydew had tried to break free but I stopped it. Never mind that it actually would have been a suicide trip because it would have gone splat on the garage floor.

You can see how the curiosity and creativity gets directed. She’s a thinker and starts to imagine practical aspects of how life would be different if the internet crashed. I just imaging dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria. Then a melon taking a little roll in the back of the car triggers me to imagine a fruit trying to escape from my car.

Funny thing was that I used to try to ignore that side of me. It was all about being logical and focused and so on. It took me a bit to embrace that side even as a manager and I found out that interjecting a little levity and silliness is often just what is needed.

Of course, in the Zombie apocalypse, she’s going to be working with the super smart people figuring out how to survive. I’ll probably be eaten while thinking about fruits escaping from the grocery stores.

I know that my particular type (INFP) is very much in the minority in this world. (Oh and as an INFP male, I’m really out there but those are stories for later). I also know read stuff by other INFP’s and it is easy to feel like we don’t have much to offer. I mean it is certainly much more practical to be thinking about how to survive if the internet dies than to be making up stories about honeydew melons trying to escape the confines of your car.

But I kind of have my own spin on things. First, the world would be deadly boring if everyone had the same personality type and thought the same way about everything. I mean in one way it might be a little calmer but I think it would wither and stagnate.

Secondly, we all came by our own unique set of talents and skills. If you believe in a higher power, then we came by those things through that. If you don’t, then it is some random genetic mix. Whatever. Point is we all showed up this way and I believe there has to be a reason for it. Yes, life is certainly tougher when you tend to be the square peg that people want to bang into that round hole but the weird ones often are the ones who move the world forward.

Or to say it in perhaps a little better way, I tend to believe that almost everyone has value and something to offer. I would say everyone but I’m not that much of an optimist and there have been some truly sick people throughout history. But most people do have something to offer even if those gifts and skills don’t appear practical or useful.

Sorry, I don’t exactly know what inspired me to channel some kind of motivational speaker. That’s a long way from a honeydew melon rolling around in the back of my car.

So I’ll just end with another little adjustment story. At the market this morning, a couple of stands had butternut squash. I can make a pretty mean butternut squash soup so we instantly picked one up. I never had butternut squash growing up but it is one of those things I’ve found later in life and wondered where it has been my entire life.

Anyway, any good soup does require cream which was something I was going to pick up at the mega market we go to. As two people who don’t remember anything and don’t make lists, of course it slipped my mind as I was looking at the arrival of all the pumpkin spiced themed food (don’t even get me started)

Now, this is a small thing but, oddly enough, it is the type of the thing that would cause a bit of stress while I was still working. I know I should have been able to blow off the small things but my mind would have been going into overdrive knowing I needed to go somewhere to get cream and when could I work that in and on and on and on. Having nothing but time means I can pretty much do it whenever. Of course, I’m going to need to put it on a post it note so I actually remember to do it!

And with that, I will leave you now to go enjoy the rest of my Saturday. (And to go make sure that honeydew hasn’t made a run for it while I wasn’t looking – you never know)