The Vagaries of Emotion

On the Myers-Briggs, I am an ENTJ.  Once or twice I've scored as an ENTP, but the ENT part is pretty fixed (although apparently I used to be an extreme extrovert and am now a more typical extrovert).  What that means is that I'm Extroverted, iNtuitive, and a Thinker, as opposed to an Introvert, Sensing, and a Feeler.  My entire life I've been much more in tune with my brain than my heart.  It seems a bit odd to even say that, since I am a romantic.  But the source of my decision making is my brain more often than my heart.

But boy can emotion still be very powerful!  If this is what it feels like to be a thinker, I feel for all those feelers out there.  Good grief it must be very difficult to feel so strongly and make decisions in light of such powerful emotions.  Even in the more settled times of my life, I find myself tugged very strongly in different directions by my emotions.  Just in the past few days, I've found myself dragged back and forth by several circumstances in my life.  In one moment, I've had a very strong emotional sentiment in one direction.  Then, within a day or two I find myself feeling dramatically different.

This bizarre roller-coaster ride makes consistency significantly more difficult.  The ups and downs of expectations prompted by external circumstances make life interesting.  Yet this is the sort of interesting that makes the phrase "May you live in interesting times" understood to be a curse.

[Side note: I've always thought this is a Chinese curse, but Wikipedia suggests that's not the case.  Also, this is the first of three curses.  The other two are, "May you come to the attention of those in authority" and "May you find what you are looking for."  Worth considering . . .]

All this raises the same old questions for me.  The question of the summum bonum of life, what's worth living for, and the value of the pursuit as opposed to the achievement.  I suppose if we had all we want, it would be a Brave New World, but one few of us would find very satisfying for long (I hope).  If it sounds like I'm talking in circles, I probably am.  But then isn't that part of the benefit of a blog -- that it doesn't really have to go anywhere?  Or perhaps that it is the opportunity to narrate the plot of our lives when we don't know what it is.  We just turn the page to see what's next.