the world through my window

So very sad.

Part of my job is to educate others about a personality theory started by Carl Jung and continued by a couple of American women. I really enjoy the work. I agree that our innate preferences are somewhat set... If you don't like Brussels sprouts, you might never like them.

Most of the time, helping others explore their own type and preferences helps me internalize what I've learned about my own preferences and personality. Most of the time I chalk it up to solid science. Those two gals, Myers and Briggs, really did their homework.

Then there are moments when I do or say or think something that would have been discounted as random thoughts and dismissed. They wouldn't prove or disprove any theories about me.

Just now, with my boys asleep in the bed next to me, the breeze brought in the scent of grassfire and I had a sudden reaction. My desire for harmony and capacity for empathy, as expressed by my feeling preference, compelled me to suddenly feel a pain that is bigger than me.

Grasses are burning in nearby Oklahoma. Farmers and residents are hoping for an end. Across the globe, Japanese men and women are explaining to their kids that, for the second day, they're not going to school tomorrow. They look down the barrel of a beginning... The beginning of a healing that will take many years.

Perhaps a little silly, that the suffering of humans hundreds or thousands oc miles away would waft in on the pleasant breeze. That the smell of woodsmoke would instantly connect me to the global harmony network. Maybe silly, but my need for harmony has no state lines. I'm at the mercy of my inborn being... The person I am.

Most of the time I love finding a new understanding of myself. Motives, limitations, strengths, faults...

But every once in a while, I just want to enjoy the breeze. I want to smell an innocent, warming, comforting fire. I don't want to be stitched together with the pain of others like we belong. It's a lot of responsibility.

I hope that the aftershocks and waves and building collapses and homelessness and hunger, disease, meltdowns, setbacks are nothing like history. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised by recovery in japan, and Oklahoma. Here's to harmony ahead.

Pleases donate if you're able, and ask your employer to match that donation. And continue to hope for others devastated by disaster.