I am just starting to understand a lot of things about the people who inspire me and thought I'd post my reflections here. Many will probably find them crazy or strangely religious, but I hope some will understand and relate, especially INFJs who tend to find inspiration in human beings just like I do.
The reason I've had to think deep on this is that I recently met an ISFJ woman who has inspired me for years. I painted her portrait last summer (I work from photographs so she only saw the result when she received the print I sent to her), and we happened to talk a bit about it, and she exclaimed: "I was thinking: 'Why did she paint me? Why?' " And I could tell she was both puzzled and moved by it. I was also moved to see her reaction and never found the words to explain it to her. I proceeded to write her a letter afterwards where I tried my best to explain it to her.
Thanks to C. S. Lewis and his autobiography Surprised by Joy I am starting to see how artistic intuitive introverts create an ideal parallel world within themselves because they see how faulty the actual world is. As a Christian, I understand this world as a "fallen world." The physical and the ideal world coexist in my life, but sometimes, a bridge is created when inspiration strikes: an element of the physical world is revealing itself as ideal. Hope fills me and makes me think the real world isn’t so hostile after all. Imagine the bliss. Since this bridge is usually created by a human being, I can become so idolatrous of that person at times.
As a Christian, I have struggled so about this! Because my conscience was step dancing around like crazy, but also because the relationships created with the inspiring people can easily become unhealthy and disastrous.
I read The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, and thought this passage particularly relevant in regards to this:
"We were made for God. Only by being a manifestation of his beauty, loving-kindness, wisdom or goodness, has any earthly Beloved excited our love. It is not that we have loved them too much, but that we did not quite understand what we were loving. It is not that we shall be asked to turn from them, so dearly familiar, to a Stranger. When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has made, sustained and moved moment by moment within, all our earthly experiences of innocent love. All that was true love in them was, even on earth, far more His than ours, and ours only because His. In Heaven there will be no anguish an no duty of turning away from our earthly Beloveds. First, because we shall have turned already; from the rivulets to the Fountain, from the creatures He made lovable to Love Himself. But secondly, because we shall find them all in Him. By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do." (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves- Charity)
Any thoughts?