Friday, February 01, 2008

It happens

(This is another transfer, from the other blog, which is now not what it was, to this blog, which is. I think I know what I mean.)

I didn't know her. We'd never met.
A Noongar (West Australian indigenous people of the South West) friend rang to say I should meet her, that she was a New York writer staying in West Australia to research a book on local painters belonging to the Carrolup School..
He passed the phone to her. We spoke. Nothing much happened, I sounded too Australian, she too American, but we agreed she would visit for an evening meal.
When she arrived I was cooking. I went to the front door, opened it, looked at her and something happened. It kept happening.
She stayed a week and in that time we talked about her Buddhist beliefs and my partner and I mentioned Carl Jung and she asked if she could take the MBTI® questionnaire.
It took no time at all for all of us to agree, she was an Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiver, ENFP, just like me, just as chaotic, just as distracted and, probably, even more disorganized.
Once we got talking life stories, you can imagine, so many parallels.
At the end of the week, as she drove away, she said: "I feel like I've found family."
So did we.
My partner, an Introvert, Sensing, Thinking, Judging (ISTJ) type was enraptured in a version of me in another physical form and culture.
These things happen. People click. Sometimes completed opposites.
For folk who are alike at their core, a confirmation of innate similarities can add depth and a connectedness to relationships.
It's wonderful when it happens.
Sometimes the opposite occurs: you don't click, you clack.
And sometimes you discover that the person has the same profile.
The question to ask yourself then is: Am I seeing in her/him all the things I don't like about myself?