Not so Deep

In a conversation yesterday a friend used the phrase, “He’s not very deep” referring to another fellow we know.   That line got stuck in my head.  Others over the years have said the opposite about me.  They have said about something I post or write, “you’re so intense, you run so deep, so serious”.  

How does one get ‘deep'?  I honestly don’t know how I got here. What I will tell you, it’s not a plus all the time.  I know it’s not the result of a decision I made.  I didn’t wake at fourteen or thirty or forty-five and choose to be deep.  I simply have found myself dog-paddling feverishly throughout my lifetime to stay afloat in these waters.  The ‘depth’ leads to brain knots, to mental exhaustion and all too often to dancing around the pit of depression if not despair.  For decades I’ve referred to myself as melancholy in an effort to dress it up.  

I know each of us is a messy conglomerate of our genetics and the family and culture that surrounds us.  At times it seems almost like a script to simply be acted out—a destiny.  It is really that set?  All I know is, when someone says “you are deep” as I look from that depth, some days it’s a blessing, others, a curse.  I’d even use the word ‘gift’ to describe it, but then there are those other days.  Why is it that some of us see beyond the pale?  Why do we see what others don’t seem to even pick up a faint glimpse of?  When what I see is the beauty of this world that surrounds us, it is nothing short of glorious, riding on the wings of the angels themselves. But when it is the darker side of humanity, the ugliness of evil that breaks in at every level of mankind, including my own heart, it is a tough go.  I too am looking for a hand up, a voice to remind me it will be ok.  That there is something, some One beyond this realm, within this realm reaching, always reaching.

Like many, maybe these question about myself led me to the very career I ‘chose’.  Did I really choose?  Or was it something else?  I lean more toward destiny the older I get. It does seem that some of us find a niche that fits us very well, like the hand in glove thing.  Swimming amidst my own questions I have explained it via my Meyers Briggs profile, an INFJ.  When I re-read the profile summary I’m reminded again we are the least prevalent profile.  Being fewer and farther between, we at times strangely find one another and almost before we speak, it is like we are residents from another planet and intuitively know it.  It is a weird dynamic.  But the profile confirms it.  There is a strong intuition within our makeup and it’s been deeply comforting to know that other INFJs struggle with what to do with what they see.  

One such person was my friend and mentor, Donald Joy, a professor at Asbury College.  On the occasion of filling in for a conference keynoter that had had a medical emergency, we met for the first time.  As the conference chairperson when I first met him, it felt as if we’d known each other for years. We launched into conversations those first days as if we’d been friends forever. We did become friends during the months that followed.  I asked him early on if as an INFJ others labeled him arrogant.  He smiled and said, “for sure”.  

We talked about how does one go about saying anything about what you see—what you intuit.  It is information that is not gained by education.  Others will ask how did you conclude that?  I didn’t conclude it. Neither is it based on a feeling although feelings do come with the question should I open my mouth at all?  Many times the answer to that is, no.  Intuition is at the gut level and impossible to explain.  So, as a ‘deep person’ you are left to swim, dive the depths solo—and it’s never best to swim alone.

As I write about all this, I seek no pity or sympathy.  There is a side of all of it that I relish (maybe that is arrogance?) I can literally get lost in beauty—landscapes, the writings of a wordsmith, the wonders of a great play or movie.  I can linger in art museums way longer than others. I have at times thought that what drives that relish of all these things is that those creators, the Creator of all that beauty are INFJs too.  For what is creativity but bringing something into being from nothing, whether that was the original elements of the very universe we inhabit or the paints or words of the painter or writer.  These works of art are the lenses of the glasses shared with the rest of the world.  It is the reason that when a dictator, a despot decides to invade, the first to be taken away are the philosophers, the artists, the poets, the playwrights who are often the prophets as well. I would repeat, listen to the music of the ages.  Humanity has not changes all that much.  We’ve got new trinkets of technology but at the core, we are much the same. 

When it feels lonely from this view, I often go looking for a compatriot who sees ‘it’ similarly via my readings, my viewing various media or via a face to face with an INFJ when available. But I do wade into media carefully in that so much there is driven by capturing my mind with fear and capitalistic illusion of all that wealth offers.  Ironically God, Allah, the Creator, the universe, whatever you choose to call it, has been more than gracious to me materially.  So I know its benefits.  I know also the envy it breeds.

 I know I am not alone in my loneliness.  All of this drives me to seek beyond myself, desperately at times.  It has been the essence of what introduced me to God on a very, private personal basis.  I learned that in the midst of all the studying, reading, the research I’ve done, with the degrees I earned—it is none of that.  It is relationship, really a love affair.  It is a way of viewing God that some think is too human, bringing God down to my level.  Well, I did not bring ‘Him’ down.  God came down. Then the more I experienced, the more mysterious it became.  We know so very little.  Yes, we have the scriptures, all the theology and religion of the ages but when I look at the darkness surrounding us these days, I wonder about the benefit of it all.  Before you think I’m tossing the baby with the bathwater, I am not.  I will testify that it was the very imperfect church that I’ve spent decades immersed in that instructed me creating a foundation, in the initial elements of my own faith.  But like the bear, I continued over a number of mountains, at times on my hands and knees to see what I have seen—experienced and now know.  God has honored that crawl.  

So much for all these ramblings about being a man of ‘depth’.  There is no brag here.  I am just who I am—from the makings within my mothers womb, even meant to be.  Like all of us, I have lived into it, sought to be what I think more and more was the intended.

So, depending on the day, sometimes the hour, you will find me sailing in the heights.  But on others you may not wish to know the depths that my soul plummets.  That is when, even from there, I know my deliverer liveth. 

It is the irony of my own being—for which, I am thankful.