Blessing or Curse?

[LucasM]

This vision in excess of ourselves beyond the present, here, now, I, to what is and what was projected to what could be unsatisfied with the superficial looking deeper to what lays beyond is amazing, scary, wondrous, frightening. Does it trap us and freeze us in a perpetual state of fear and doom, giving rise to elevated levels of sadness, bitterness, depression or insanity. Does it free us to be more, enable us, show a path, a destination. Is it a blessing or a curse?
Retype:
This vision we have beyond what is can be beautiful or frightening. It can trap us or free us. (sorry, I guess that the original sentence made no sense even to me now :P so here it is retyped) (or maybe it does make sense? Or I am just confusing myself. you have to read it 'properly' I guess.)

Both.

How do you deal with your vision?

Now I, being I, use this vision and become depressed, bitter, and cynical, but I, being I, later use this vision to cure myself; there is more to this than the I, more to this than the depressing. And so I think and feel that like any gift given to us, the more valuable the treasure, the more dangerous the misuse.

[Now I guess you'll just have to use your iNtuition to see what it is I am talking about here, but I have hopes]

 

[Razare]

You mean the understanding of everything... life, death, before and after, just understood differently by all of us? Of course this a general understanding without specifics as we are not omnipotent.

It was frightening at first, and depressing because of its reality. I'm not sure all of us INTP's have grasped it fully yet, because there is a beautiful element to it that resembles heaven and hell. If you get close to it, you may turn away cynical about existence, yet if you keep searching beyond that you see the beauty. It was also a fun mind exercise at the time, to carry out the trajectory of intelligent life to its furthest possible achievement and surmise what happens as a result.

I believe most of the founders of modern day religions grasped this knowledge somehow, even if they were not INTP. I see the wisdom in elements of their dogma that hint of ultimate understanding.

I would say it is a Blessing with no practical purpose. It can only be understood individually by each person who discovers it for themselves. It gives you a faint morality that can guide your reasoning and actions from time to time, but it can also be dangerous for those of us who fail to grasp it fully. Before I had a full understanding, I thought life was pointless from a logical point of view. That we died and there was nothing, and when the universe ended, that was it, it's over, my meager existence will be erased from the records of time. This is a very depressed way of thinking, that results in cynicism about life. I also think it's a vital step in reaching the true understanding beyond that, though.

 

[snowqueen]

This vision in excess of ourselves beyond the present, here, now, I, to what is and what was projected to what could be unsatisfied with the superficial looking deeper to what lays beyond is amazing, scary, wondrous, frightening. Does it trap us and freeze us in a perpetual state of fear and doom, giving rise to elevated levels of sadness, bitterness, depression or insanity. Does it free us to be more, enable us, show a path, a destination. Is it a blessing or a curse?
Retype:
This vision we have beyond what is can be beautiful or frightening. It can trap us or free us. (sorry, I guess that the original sentence made no sense even to me now :P so here it is retyped) (or maybe it does make sense? Or I am just confusing myself. you have to read it 'properly' I guess.)

Both.

How do you deal with your vision?

Now I, being I, use this vision and become depressed, bitter, and cynical, but I, being I, later use this vision to cure myself; there is more to this than the I, more to this than the depressing. And so I think and feel that like any gift given to us, the more valuable the treasure, the more dangerous the misuse.

[Now I guess you'll just have to use your iNtuition to see what it is I am talking about here, but I have hopes]

I understand exactly what you are saying. And I have struggled with it for 50 years. But I have to go to work!!! I'll respond later

 

[The Fury]

I think I understand what you are talking about LucasM, I also think that it comes with being an NP. To see constant connections within life, seeing the meaning to the actions taken place within the world. For me it can be both a blessing and a curse. It can allow you to manipulate the world and people within it, or it can cause you to feel great hatred at yourself and everyone else.

I think you have to find self-acceptance or else it will cause you to lead a very bitter life.

 

[snowqueen]

This vision in excess of ourselves beyond the present, here, now, I, to what is and what was projected to what could be unsatisfied with the superficial looking deeper to what lays beyond is amazing, scary, wondrous, frightening. Does it trap us and freeze us in a perpetual state of fear and doom, giving rise to elevated levels of sadness, bitterness, depression or insanity. Does it free us to be more, enable us, show a path, a destination. Is it a blessing or a curse?
Retype:
This vision we have beyond what is can be beautiful or frightening. It can trap us or free us. (sorry, I guess that the original sentence made no sense even to me now :P so here it is retyped) (or maybe it does make sense? Or I am just confusing myself. you have to read it 'properly' I guess.)

Both.

How do you deal with your vision?

Now I, being I, use this vision and become depressed, bitter, and cynical, but I, being I, later use this vision to cure myself; there is more to this than the I, more to this than the depressing. And so I think and feel that like any gift given to us, the more valuable the treasure, the more dangerous the misuse.

[Now I guess you'll just have to use your iNtuition to see what it is I am talking about here, but I have hopes]

OK I've put in my requisite hours and am back to respond. I rashly said that I knew exactly what you meant thus falling into The Fury's second category of how INTPs post. Now I'll probably do the first.

The Curse/The Blessing
Having spent about 3 minutes deciding whether to put the Curse or the Blessing first ...

I call it multiple possibility syndrome! I can, almost instantaneously envisage the worst and the best possibilities in any situation. In exquisite detail. I am the worst pessimist and the most psychotic optimist at the same time. I can sink into the nightmare scenario with the same level of depth as I can construct utopia.

It is so hard to describe to other people what that actually feels like. I don't even realise I'm doing it sometimes. An event which remains in my memory is being at a dinner party and expounding my theory on how we as 'citizens' are no more than pets with the same relationship to our governments as a pet rabbit has to its owner (we are either happy pets with good housing, daily activities and food or the converse) and extrapolating into a dystopian future and when I finished my friend saying 'well that's put a dampener on the evening'. The next time I might be excitedly discussing a fantastic idea for an alternative form of public transport which would transform our lives.

I do it in relation to myself frequently - although not as frequently as I did when I was younger. I can paralyse myself with terror by taking an event in the news and projecting it into the future - almost trancelike in its power. (Children of Men did that very well I thought but it haunted me for days, the middle section of Cloud Atlas too).

But I also do it with regards to my own life and that is a bit more destructive. I used to see doom and gloom ahead, focusing on my shortcomings and my many failures and too often they have prevented me from taking chances which might have been beneficial for the real curse is indecisiveness, followed closely by regret for routes not taken when decisions are finally made. I am tormented by the things I wanted to do but haven't done. I despair at the fact that I simply don't have enough time to learn all that I want to learn, to read all that I want to read and the internet has only made that all much worse!! I need at least 5 more lifetimes to achieve my dreams because I also need loads of time just to sit around thinking. Actually another 100 still wouldn't be enough. And it's worse now that I'm older because I can not only project forwards but I can project backwards and the 'what if' function is particularly cruel if focused on the past. I find myself sitting ruminating about what if my father hadn't died, what if my english teacher hadn't lied, what if I'd moved to New York etc etc and if I try to talk to friends about it they simply think I'm mad to entertain such thoughts at all (and actually they are right it's just that I take a perverse delight in it sometimes)

But actually I have made the tendency also work very much to my advantage. Despite my plunging despair, I find that I almost always bounce back when I can begin to focus on the alternative story, the positive possibilities, the extraordinarily brave steps I've take to overcome obstacles, the ideas I haven't yet discovered but must be out there somewhere if I look hard enough. I now embrace uncertainty, see it as the great liberator that prevents me from being trapped by always providing an alternative perspective. It's what makes me admired at work for coming up with 'leftfield' thinking, for being innovative and quick to spot the potential in new ideas.

Overall the multiple possibility syndrome is a blessing despite the anguish it sometime brings. The trick is to remember the possibilities are always there in rich variety, not just dark colours. And as far as possible to cut out people in your life who do not appreciate you and seek out those who do.

So that might not be exactly what you meant but it's what your post resonated with in me.

 

[Kuu]

Does it make you feel impotent, insignificant, intrascendental, and pathetic... yes, it does.
But does it not also make you yearn, dream, smile, cry, and keep on going?

Oh, contradictions of the optimistic pessimists.

 

[mathy]

Absolutely beautifully written snowqueen.

I had always wondered how to put those thoughts into words, and I believe you did that. I thank you for helping me untangle some of the abstract, wordless thoughts that have been floating in my head. I am only 24, so I have not had the wealth of experiences and what-ifs that you seem to have, but even at this young age I simultaneously think of all the things I should have done and all the endless possibilities that lay ahead.

The word that captures it perfectly for me is... Longing. But always in limbo...

Tekton said it simply and succinctly ... an optimistic pessimist. I never knew how to answer the question when asked to me, and never thought of it that way, although it fits perfectly.

 

[Ermine]

Like Tekton, I frequently switch between idealism and cynicism. It's what gives me contrast in life. Sometimes I see it as peachy, sometimes it's hopeless. I personally view contrast as beautiful, so in a way, it's a bittersweet blessing.

 

[chocolate]

Both.
[...]
How do you deal with your vision?

Both is the answer to blessing or curse!

How do I deal? Sometimes my vision makes me incredibly happy and optimistic. I can spend hours daydreaming about the future and what I could do...this is very exciting, and I know that I have the ability to do anything if I wanted to. This is a powerful and on-top-of-the-world feeling. I honestly feel at those times that I could be one of those people who changes the world, because I know that most other people don't have the ideas and vision that I have.

Sometimes it makes me very sad and apathetic about life because I am not concerned with many of the 'normal' things that distract people day by day. When that is all stripped away though, what is there? Kind of -- nothing! That can feel like a profound emptiness that I am sure many people here know. It's sort of an out-of-body experience.

When I go out into the real world sometimes I feel a wash of sadness because my Ne tells me "You don't really belong: you're odd". It feels like there is a big party and everyone's invited except me! haha.

I don't actually deal with this; I just accept that that's how it's going to be for me and I ride out the low times.

 

[Affinity’s Edge]

Both is the answer to blessing or curse!

How do I deal? Sometimes my vision makes me incredibly happy and optimistic. I can spend hours daydreaming about the future and what I could do...this is very exciting, and I know that I have the ability to do anything if I wanted to. This is a powerful and on-top-of-the-world feeling. I honestly feel at those times that I could be one of those people who changes the world, because I know that most other people don't have the ideas and vision that I have.

Sometimes it makes me very sad and apathetic about life because I am not concerned with many of the 'normal' things that distract people day by day. When that is all stripped away though, what is there? Kind of -- nothing! That can feel like a profound emptiness that I am sure many people here know. It's sort of an out-of-body experience.

When I go out into the real world sometimes I feel a wash of sadness because my Ne tells me "You don't really belong: you're odd". It feels like there is a big party and everyone's invited except me! haha.

I don't actually deal with this; I just accept that that's how it's going to be for me and I ride out the low times.

This was so good; all of it, but it was that last sentence that held so much weight with me:

I don't actually deal with this; I just accept that that's how it's going to be for me and I ride out the low times.

For me I am always running things through the cogwheel of my brain; trying to analyze the answer or solution and produce the most efficient results. Often it can be a very complex dynamic in my mind, however, it seems with this; it is the complex dynamic and breadth of the actuality of what is in involved in existence (objectively) outside of speculative reasoning (subjectively); not just the dynamics it is subjective to in my head, that has rendered such a simple and yet insightful answer to ring so true throughout my entire being. Perhaps there is a fix in the afterlife, however for here and now I am able to survive by riding out the lows. I personally think it takes a profound insight and understanding to do so and to truly understand at times – things just are what they are – even if my own consensus reality cannot push beyond this, am I some voodoo magician over creation having myself been created? Or is it smarter as it is to realize the subjectivity to which we are held as creations in this creation and roll so to speak with the scenery that both composes us and makes up the world we sometimes find ourselves to be in awful disharmony with? If that makes any sense to anyone I don't know, but it just really sparked something in me that was somewhat of an epiphany in contrast to the over complexity I tend to soak everything with.

 

[snowqueen]

This was so good; all of it, but it was that last sentence that held so much weight with me:

For me I am always running things through the cogwheel of my brain; trying to analyze the answer or solution and produce the most efficient results.

agreed - this is definitely what I am doing.

Often it can be a very complex dynamic in my mind, however, it seems with this; it is the complex dynamic and breadth of the actuality of what is in involved in existence (objectively) outside of speculative reasoning (subjectively); not just the dynamics it is subjective to in my head, that has rendered such a simple and yet insightful answer to ring so true throughout my entire being.

This was a little trickier to decipher so let me see if I have understood correctly. Are you saying that in addition to the constant analysis that is going on internally, you have an awareness of the vast unknown that you know exists and which you cannot ever fully know, and in some strange way you can add that in to your internal analysis but with the understanding that you cannot actually understand it, but you simply have to 'ride' it rather than ignore it?

Furthermore because we INTPs have to know everything and yet we cannot, in order to prevent ourselves going mad, being able to 'ride out the lows' is a prime survival mechanism?

One of the most useful things I ever learned was Buddhist meditation partly because it (at least the form I learned) was about learning to relax one's mind - in the same way that it is helpful to know how to relax one's body. But also, because as you watch your mind and emotions rising and fading away you get a strong sense of the impermanence of such phenomena. That meant that when I do find myself in a thought storm and/or an emotional trough, I can remember 'this will pass' and that helps me ride it out.