INTUITIVE INELEGANCE: I went with my brother today to visit an elderly aunt recovering from a heart attack at a physical rehabilitatin center. My aunt is doing fine, and should be going home in about a week or so. Like my brother, she’s a down-to-earth person, definitely a type “S” temperament as far as Myers-Briggs analysis goes. I’m much the opposite, out there in the spacey world of abstract “N”-ness. In a place like a rehab center, “N-ness” isn’t going to help you much. Two examples:

I got to the center a few minutes before my brother did, so I went up to my aunt’s room. Lo and behold, she wasn’t there. Hmm, I felt a bit like the women at Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. I went up front and asked the attendent if my aunt had gone home. No, she was still here. Just then my brother walked in, and after I told him what I had seen, he immediately sensed what had happened: her son was already there and had taken her out to the patio, given that it was a warm day. That turned out to be the case. But that scenario just didn’t occur to me … my mind was fishing for something more grandiose. And in this instance, grandiose was the wrong pond to fish in.

We then found my aunt along with my cousin and his wife out on the patio, and spent about an hour out in the hazy afternoon sun with them. Finally, my brother said that he had to get home to see how my own mother was doing, and the two of us pondered whether we needed to go back through the building or get past a closed gate in the patio fence, as a shortcut to the parking lot. I walked over to the fence gate, and since it was relatively low, I was able (with clumsy effort) to get my legs over it. My brother then elegantly lifted an iron latch, moved the gate, and strided easily through the door. Somehow he just sensed how that fence gate was arranged — and somehow I did not.

Well, that’s the difference between Sensibles and iNtuitives. In life, we all face many different types of situations, and sometimes the S’s have the easier time of it because of their down-to-earth common sense and their deep communion with the tangible. In other situations, type N’s use their abstract reasoning and analytical ability to figure out what to do, or at least what not to do. There’s obviously a need for both approaches here on this planet. But darn, we type N’s are always going to be klutzy with physical things — as I observed today in a physical rehabilitation center.