I feel that being an INFP is like being an alien, no matter how hard you try you feel like a visitor from another world and spend a good deal of your time either trying to acclamate and exist in this strange and hostile environment or trying to figure out why exactly you're here in this place that you oftentimes don't understand. you're in the world but not really of it. INFPs are called the defenders of the realm, the pure white warriors. i don't feel like a defender of the realm. i'm harmless. i'm certainly not a fighter because as an INFP i don't like violence. and we INFPs are so few and far between that i seriously doubt that we really make any sort of difference even though we easily have all the answers to the ills of the world and the deep desire to cure those ills. but i guess that's why we're the defenders. we're the only ones that realize that the realm needs defending. there's something very painful about being an INFP. the loneliness is definitely the biggest thing. it's so hard to find anybody who really understands you and doesn't pass you off as a flighty, reclusive, quixotic looney. to outsiders we are strange idealists. but to the INFP ideals are not impossible dreams. they are real, more real than anything else and they are the only driving force for us. the Good is what gives everything meaning. being an INFP is like being a physician with all the knowledge and desire to cure your patients only to realize that the patient doesn't want to be cured. the patient doesn't even realize that they are sick and that they need help. it's very painful to watch someone suffer from something that you know doesn't have to be. we are very spiritual in a world where real spirituality is looked at as an oddity. we are intellectual in a world where knowledge for knowledge's sake goes against the pragmatic majority. we are soft-spoken and shy in a world where the ideal is to be outgoing and aggressive. we have a clear sense of what is ethical and feel compassion deeply for those that suffer in a world where people seem to be so self-centered, directionless, and shallow. being so special is a hard and lonely existence. even so, i still think that INFPs have an important place in creation. we're here to provide leverage against the craziness that the others create. we're the counterweight. it's like being a small group of older kids looking after an overwhelming majority of out of control two year olds wo believe they know better than you. it's very strange indeed but we can only be what we are. we should be proud and live our truth because we do have a supreme responsibilty. personally i'm honored to be an INFP
