The MBTI, Electro-Groove, oh, and the Joys of Winter Sledding

Apparently I am borderline INTJ. (Slightly 'T' - 3 points in favor. Last time I took the exam, I had been INFJ.)

But actually, the mad scientist stereotype is appealing. It's quite intriguing, this rational thought and analytical, knowledge-search-based personality. Maybe it's even perfect?
After all, I am the kid hobbling about the library with a stack of obscure books on astronomy, borrowing out unfathomable texts with hardcore equations that I dare to hope to decipher. Never mind if I ever actually do, (or get around to it, for that matter), I am overtaken by an unquenchable thirst to know. As of lately, I'm conquering a cognitive neuroscience textbook. Don't ask how I find the time.

And, well, based on this INTJCentral description, quite fitting...

Q: Can I become an INTJ?

A: Unless you are born an INTJ, your only hope is to find a genie lamp while strolling on the beach, rub it, and make a wish. You can fake being one of us by burying yourself in a mound of books, nerding out on a favorite subject (like quantum mechanics, not needlepoint), wandering around by yourself, not giving a damn what others think of you, etc. If this sounds like too much work, just try doing a good robot impersonation.

Well, I can do the robot dance. (Albeit, not nearly as good as these two Danish guys.)
The only thing that bothers me is the INTJ emphasized lack of emotion; yes, the robotic manner of the personality type. That's what doesn't quite click. Everything else fits neatly into place, which once again, stirs me uneasy about my major choice. In retrospect, I am awestruck by how many strangers in life have peered at me and inquired whether I wanted to be a physicist or chemist (I particularly hold dear memory of a merry elderly lady in a bustling Distrito Federal restaurant). Somehow sciences have never been my forte, but I am realizing that my problem-solving abilities are up to par, and that I am capable. And if I have a tinge of passion for the sciences, why not do it?

I guess, certain abilities and assumptions of what we might be good at (or, the horrid term - destined to do), are only results of past experience. Now, basing myself on the recent scientific idea of the plasticity of the brain (ability to be shaped or form, i.e. our brains are not machines and we can alter their maps at will), which I had discovered in the book The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. On page 209 of the text, he presents an enlightening metaphor on the brain and our current abilities/talents:

Pascual-Leone explains this with a metaphor. The plastic brain is like a snowy hill in winter. Aspects of that hill - the slope, the rocks, the consistency of the snow - are, like our genes, a given. When we slide down on a sled, we can steer it and will end up at the bottom of the hill by following a path determined both by how we steer and the characteristics of the hill. Where exactly we will end up is hard to predict because there are so many factors in play.

"But," Pascual-Leone says, "what will definitely happen the second time you take the slope down is that you will more likely than not find yourself somewhere or another that is related to the path you took the first time. It won't be exactly your path, but it will be closer to that one than any other. And if you spend your entire afternoon sledding down, walking up, sledding down, at the end you will have some paths that have been used a lot, some that have been used very little... and there will be tracks that you have created, and it is very difficult now to get out of those tracks. And those tracks are not genetically determined anymore."

What we have done repetitively in life, the ways we've steered and tracks we've molded to, make us who we are today. Since some paths are so easy now for us to slide down, we might consider them our abilities, talents. But that does not mean we are incapable of steering differently and molding other tracks. Genes do not hold us back, they but provide the characteristics of the hill. No more excuses of "my brain doesn't work that way," or, "I just wasn't made to solve math equations."

So, if you've got passion for something you're not certain you've got talent for, go for it. It's just a matter of sliding down for a whole afternoon and creating another "really speedy" track.

Go on, impress a new track, one that is also "efficient at guiding the sled down the hill."


Works Cited
Doidge, Norman. The Brain that Changes Itself. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007. Print.