Somewhere on here I once commented on the compatibility between the classical temperaments and MBTI. INFJ corresponds with the melancholic-phlegmatic (primary-secondary) blend. Those with a melancholic temperament emotionally experience things deeply and intensely over a long duration, and react slowly to such stimuli. This describes the dominant aspect in the INFJ. Those with a phlegmatic temperament emotionally experience things not so deeply and intensely, and are slow to be affected, with the effect lasting over short duration, and responding slowly too. Put them together and in the INFJ you have someone who feels deeply and intensely, yet at once is somewhat disembodied from their emotions in the short term - with such emotions welling up, and pouring forth, in the long term - sometime after the emotional stimuli which in and of itself may have been forgotten by this time! This is a generalisation of course.
Yesterday I went to visit some local caves. Amazing really. Intellectually I was aware how great it was, but emotionally I was almost 'empty' in regards to what I was sensing. The impression goes deep but I usually only feel this impression after the event - i.e. the grandness and mystery of the cave is unfolding emotionally more so today after the event, than yesterday! I find this the case namely if I'm in a group experiencing things with them, as opposed to being by myself.
This particular dimension of delayed appreciation (registered emotionally) I think has to do with personality, and is realised more acutely through introspection. An introspection which will likely, and hopefully, mature with age, and thus lead to a deeper 'sense' of one's life events, relationships and encounters. Perhaps youthful naivety (not synonymous with youth, but an
almost inevitable companion of it) may lend itself towards being unable to as effectively introspect, and so hampering a 'sense' of the value/significance of a past event.
Hindsight is a gift given with the passing of time. Bestowed more graciously as time extends - usually quantitatively, but namely qualitatively - which often goes hand in hand with time in quantity, but doesn't have to. As the heart often matures with the experience of corporeal age, but the heart can mature with the experience of few events deeply felt. However it comes, hindsight is the binoculars of introspection. It's 20/20 vision as they say. I suppose some form of naivety is ever with us in the present, in comparison to the clarity hindsight often (but not always) brings.
Wordsworth speaks on all of this, in Daffodils - especially the last stanza:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.