#it was a really hard decision to choose the isfj lady

[notanotherinfjblog]

The types as strangers I wish I had known (version 2)

After I made one post like this already and really enjoyed doing that, have another group of 16 people none of us will ever know.

INTJ: I’ve had several classes with her over the last two years, but we’ve never had an actual conversation. Usually, I see her sit across the room (the tables build a U-form, so you can look everyone in the eye), watching people. What makes her interesting is the way she watches them. She sits there, kind of aloof, and doesn’t move a bit, but her eyes have this intensity whenever she lays them on someone. She listens intently to everything and you can really see the gear-wheels working in her brain as she processes all this information, until she speaks up and suddenly everyone goes quiet. She has this kind of confidence you only get when you really know yourself, and since people often fear people that know themselves, it makes her a bit intimidating.

INTP: I was stuck on a ship that was, for whatever reason, overcrowded with elderly people and there was this one old married couple that somehow stood out. Of all the many people, they seemed the happiest. When she was walking around the ship, I saw him sitting there alone at his table, with his bushy eyebrows slightly raised and a little smile on his face as he was drifting off in his thoughts. I could see him jumping from thought to thought, from memory to memory, and I wondered what he might have been thinking about that made his face beam with wonder and fascination. And then, when his wife came back to him, he returned from his mind palace, and his whole face lit up as he smiled at her. She sat down across from him and smiled back. Slowly, she reached for his hand on the table and he took it, and both of them lost themselves in their own thoughts which seemed to be the same anyway.

ENTJ: I saw her in one of my free periods at university, where she was sitting a few tables over with her boyfriend when an acquaintance of her suddenly came over and sat down. You could see how she wasn’t exactly pleased about it, but she was polite and talked to her - when she got the chance to, her acquaintance talked one hell of a lot. So, while her acquaintance kept talking and I kept watching them, her eyes wandered around the room. And when her gaze reached me, when she looked at me looking at them, I just felt so judged that I quickly looked away. There was this kind of natural authority in her, she radiated it so that, in a way, you felt obliged to bow down to her like you would bow down to your queen. Other than me, her acquaintance wasn’t as impressed by her though. Well, until she interrupted her acquaintance’s talking with a “sorry, we gotta go”, grabbed her boyfriend’s arm and just took off. (I would also like to mention that she was taller than her boyfriend because I applaud everyone that doesn’t follow such pointless gender stereotypes. Good on you. You go, girl!)

ENTP: He is a guy in one of my classes at university and he’s just so interesting to observe. He’s older than most of us, sometimes mentions the way his little daughter speaks, growing up as a Syrian child in a German speaking country, when he wants to emphasize a point (we study linguistics), and most of the time, he is just so desperate to talk. It’s a field investigation class where we work with a native speaker of a yet unexplored language to develop a grammar, and he is in a constant state of dying when he wants to ask our informant a thousand questions, but our professor tells him to wait a bit. Occasionally, he talks over him with the words “I’m really sorry, but this just cannot wait” and asks the question anyway. He always has a theory on how this might work and how that might work and how these twenty mechanisms might be correlated and his mind seems to be constantly buzzing with new thoughts and ideas. He’s probably one of the most enthusiastic and intelligent people I’ve ever come across. And then, he says thank you for every little thing anyone says and does. He says thank you when you asked a good question he didn’t come up with himself, and this state of mind is so beautiful that I always just want to go give him a hug for being this awesome.

INFJ: Sometimes I look her in the eye and I wonder who she is. She is me, but somehow she isn’t. I don’t know how that can be. I smile at her and she smiles back. I try to laugh and she does, too. I feel like she knows me, but why don’t I know her? Why is it so hard to get my head around the fact that the blank face I look at, the blank face I look at every time I look in the mirror - is mine? I look at the little strand of hair that just keeps falling across my forehead, at these cheekbones that for some reason get sharper every day and at the freckles that never seem to fade away. I look at those piercing eyes and I wonder who the people see in me.

INFP: It was a sunny August afternoon and I was melting in my car as if the sun had decided to burn as all alive. The traffic lights turned red and I stopped and kept melting and wondered if you can die of a sunshine overdose. Then, another car stopped behind me, and I decided to observe the driver in the rearview mirror. He was in his 40s, probably, and his curly hair had already turned grey. I looked at him and saw how he shook his head in disbelief. He laughed and shook his head and I wondered what just happened. Did he embarrass himself and he can’t believe it? Did he finally do something he never thought he’d actually do? Did someone confess their undying love for him and now, he’s so happy he can’t believe it? I still wonder about it sometimes, about what might have been the reason that he giggled with his eyes closed and his head shaken in disbelief, and I wonder if he is happy now. 

ENFJ: I was in a restaurant in Luxembourg on a beautiful summer evening when I saw her sitting at this table over there with two other people. They spoke broken English with each other and she had some kind of South East Asian accent, but I can’t be sure. And I saw here sitting there in this chair with the giant backrest that made her look so small while her upright posture and her gentle smile made her appear so grand. She was the centre of attention, of course she was. But I don’t think she knew. Her work acquaintances, I assume, who didn’t know each other that well, kept looking at her, kept waiting for her reaction on their little jokes and anecdotes, kept waiting for appreciation and approval. They looked at her like a child would after it drew a picture for their mother and is anxiously expecting her praise. And she smiled at both of them, listened intently to everything they had to say, covered her mouth with a hand when she giggled and looked from one to the other to share her joy. She was a pure and kind soul, someone with a heart as big as the entire country, genuinely good and free, and I really wished I could have known her.

ENFP: When I first saw him, when I first saw the way he stood in front of me on the train and glanced back at me before he got out, I didn’t know how desperately I could want to see someone again. When I saw him for the second time, when we stood across from each other on the train with a mere meter of unspoken thoughts between us, and looked each other in the eye for a while until he couldn’t take it anymore and looked at the ground and then looked right back up at me again, I didn’t know that it was possible to feel vulnerable and thoroughly happy all at once. When I spotted him on a crowded train for the third time, when I saw him standing there with his blonde hair oozing out from under his bobble hat, I was sure that I had never seen anything as beautiful as him. And then I saw him lean back a bit behind the man with a newspaper in his hand as he spotted me as well, and our eyes met for a while. I could feel my mind escaping, for I did not know how easily I could lose my heart to someone I didn’t even know. And then, he looked back at me over his shoulder before he got out of the train and I sighed, and now I wonder how it can be that the first twenty years of my life suddenly appear this empty to me. I never saw him again. Come back to me, please.

ISTJ: Every time I take the train at 8:06 am, I find him standing there at the exact same spot in front of the one door that will be the closest to the staircase at the station where he must leave. He’s actually the father of a childhood friend of mine, but I don’t think he ever recognised me. And now, whenever I take the train at this hour, I can be sure he will be there, every day, at the same spot, sometimes reading the newspaper, sometimes talking to some work acquaintances, sometimes just staring into space. Every time, I can be sure to see him there with the white hair and the deepening wrinkles around his eyes. I see his daughter in him, I see her kindness and gentle spirit in him, and considering she is one of the best people I’ve ever had the privilege to know, this is one of the greatest compliments I am capable of giving.

ESTJ: It was a freezing January afternoon and the sun was already setting, when she and her friend walked past me at the train station and remained within earshot, so that my nosy little self could listen to their conversation. Apparently, they were both training as some kind of nursery teachers, judging by the topics they were talking about after an exam they just had, but the conversation quickly turned to an upcoming group project. And so this girl went on how badly this project was planned by the teacher and her classmates. Honestly, she laid out an entire plan for why this and that was inefficient and problematic, and how she would improve this and that and basically the entire system if she just had a say in the matter. She jumped up and down a bit as she tried to keep herself warm, and her cheeks turned rosy, and this passionate anger at inefficiency of hers while jumping around in the cold somehow made her look quite endearing.

ISFJ: I was on the tram when this elderly woman and her granddaughter got in and sat down across from me. I couldn’t help but stare at her for a moment. I’ve never seen anyone with a face as likable and adorable as hers. Her face was full of wrinkles, and most of them were deep lines around her eyes that kept going down half of her face. And she smiled. Oh, the way she smiled. Her dimples were so deep and big that I refuse to believe that she has ever done anything but smile. She looked out of the window, watched the people and cars pass by and she smiled. She looked at me and she smiled. She talked to her teenage granddaughter and smiled and patted her on the knee before they left. And for a moment there, I really wished I could have been her granddaughter.

ESFJ: I was sitting in a hallway on a little ferry and there were these three little girls that ran in circles around the ship and played tag. The oldest of these girls was about 8 years old and I loved her with every fiber of my heart. She played with her little sisters whose hair was as light blonde and tousled as hers. The smallest child kept running into the cafeteria and as the eldest, she was the one to run after her, to take her by the hand and guide her back. Then, she said “No, Hannah! This is not what we agreed on with mum!” with an overly dramatic stern face. There was drama in everything she did. She dramatically and deliberately fell to the floor and giggled when she saw the many concerned faces that looked at her. She dramatically stamped her foot when her little sister ran into the cafeteria again, before she sighed dramatically, rolled her eyes, glanced at her audience with a little smile and ran after her sister once again. I really wish for the day that I turn on the tv and see her face again as the actress she’s supposed to become.

ISTP: He sat there on the bus with me, with these round Harry-Potter-glasses, and looked out of the window, sometimes watching the world fly by, sometimes frowning when he lost himself in thoughts. And in a strange kind of way, he seemed just so awake. Like his mind was working on high speed, like he knew exactly what was going on anywhere and anytime and why. There didn’t seem to be anything he didn’t perceive and analyse and understand immediately. He seemed to have figured it all out - except maybe himself.

ESTP: Normally, it’s quite easy to guess the majors of all the people you see running around campus since most people just look the part, but when you first see him, he doesn’t really look like he would be one of the few male linguistics students. He is this big muscular guy with perfectly styled hair who spends his time in the back of the class on the phone or fooling around with some friends, but from what I’ve witnessed, he’s doing very well on his studies and seems to be all around a very nice person. When he overhears some people talk about how they don’t understand some topic, he quickly chimes in and explains it to them as good as he can. Basically, his entire behaviour could be summarised as “I accepted and embraced my insecurities, that’s what makes me confident, let me lure you out of your shell and make you confident as well”. And I really like that.

ISFP: It was 8am when he entered the train that was packed full with commuters such as myself. He stood across from me, with these big headphones over his beanie, with the beard and the kind of hippie winter coat. He looked at his phone, read a message he got and his eyes lit up. With a tender smile on his face, he answered this person who obviously was very very dear to him. Then, when he put his phone away, he smiled at the ground and looked out of the window and there was such love and gentle kindness in these shining brown eyes with the unusually long eye-lashes that every girl would kill for, and I am convinced that whoever it is that holds his heart, must be a very lucky person indeed.

ESFP: I sometimes see him on the bus with his wife and his two little sons. I’m always a bit confused why his wife never sits with him and their kids, so that he has to take care of them alone. I remember this one particular morning when he sat across from me, with his older son, who was about three, sitting on his lap and his younger son in a buggy right next to him. The younger one was very crotchety that day and cried and was thrashing around. The mother didn’t care and the dad tried to calm him down, spoke to him in a soft voice and tried to gently hold him still. But nothing worked and in the end, I saw him cover his eyes. His shoulders were shaking. I think he was crying silently and my heart sank. The older son took his dad’s hand and looked up at him with big sad eyes, and when the dad then uncovered his face, his eyes were so tired. He then hugged both of his sons with a little smile, and got out of the bus with them and their mother.