100 Tahun Yang Lalu

Pada suatu ketika, ada daerah yang sangat sengsara.

Panen gagal. Air langka. Penduduknya sulit mendapatkan pekerjaan. Makanan jarang ditemukan. Polusi dan penyakit di mana-mana.

Hampir separuh penduduknya memilih untuk mengadu nasib di belahan bumi yang lain. Mereka memutuskan untuk naik kapal dan tidak kembali lagi.

Daerah itu bernama Gothenburg. Seratus tahun yang lalu. Ia sangat miskin dan tertinggal dibandingkan tetangga-tetangganya, ketika Denmark dan negeri-negeri di Eropa Barat sudah maju dalam industri dan peradaban.

Karena emigrasi besar-besaran di masa itu, penduduk Gothenburg jauh lebih sedikit daripada populasi orang Swedia yang pindah dan tinggal di Chicago. Itu pun bukan pilihan utama, sebab mayoritas migran Swedia pada awal abad ke-20 lebih banyak ditemukan di wilayah Midwest, khususnya Minnesota, Amerika Serikat.

Pada suatu ketika, seratus tahun kemudian. 2014.

Ada suatu daerah yang menjadi pelabuhan terbesar di Eropa Utara. Kota ini sangat maju, sehingga salahsatu perlintasan tram-nya menjadi yang tersibuk di seluruh Skandinavia. Semua bangsa berbondong-bondong datang ke daerah ini, melalui darat, laut, dan udara. Seandainya pun ingin belajar bahasa asing, sering-seringlah naik kendaraan umum karena di sana engkau akan mendengar bahasa-bahasa dari 7 benua (kecuali benua Antartika alias Kutub Selatan).

Di Gothenburg, industri-industri menancapkan giginya. Manufaktur, otomotif, telekomunikasi sampai pariwisata, bermacam bidang usaha menunjukkan suksesnya di sini.

Orang-orangnya juga menarik. Berbeda dengan kebanyakan penduduk metropolitan yang cenderung tergesa-gesa dan kurang ramah, di Gothenburg kita mudah menemukan orang tersenyum dan bertanya apa kabar. Kalau ke pasar atau bertemu pelayan toko, jangan lupa mengucapkan terima kasih dan sampai jumpa, sebab jika tidak maka mereka yang akan mengucapkannya kepada kita … dan aku jamin kita akan merasa malu daripada bangga.

Kalau keluar atau masuk gedung di tempat umum, jangan lupa memegang pintunya untuk orang-orang di belakang kita … sebab itu adalah adab yang tidak tertulis. Begitu juga, adab yang tidak tertulis untuk memencet tombol bantuan “jembatan otomatis” untuk penumpang yang naik atau turun kendaraan umum dengan kursi roda, atau ibu-ibu dengan kereta bayi, atau lansia dengan tongkat berjalannya.

Betapa jauh bedanya suatu negeri seratus tahun yang lalu dengan sekarang.

itulah yang membuatku optimis, siapa tahu seratus tahun ke depan Indonesia juga bisa dibanggakan oleh penduduknya, generasi tua dan muda. Semoga.

An INFJ Learns Typology

Currently, I am learning typology. It is like rolling down into a rabbit hole with all of its beautiful metaphors and terminologies. Not only I should memorize the 16 mnemonics, it is almost like a song that is better to just sing along than to remember the lyrics. It may sound cliché, but the more I learn typology then the more I know things are not as simple as they may have seemed. There are dominant, auxiliary, tertiary, and inferior functions of each personality type. It shows different ways of people to get and use their mental energy; to obtain, sort and process information; and also to make a decision and to do an action according to these information they have. All in all, at least there are 16 ways of doing this. How interesting!

What I knew later is that everyone is not bound only to 4 functions in a type. People have all the combination of 8 introverted/extroverted functions, but what distinguish between types is the levels of its strength and the order of functional stacks. Just like automobiles, basically every personality type has all the basics, but there are specific automobiles for specific terrains and purposes. There are cars for racing arenas, off-roads, inner cities, suburbs, deserts, or even water bodies. So is the same with personality; each of us will thrive and shine in a perfect time and place.

I took 3 different tests at 3 different places, and all of them signify that I am an INFJ. Thus, I concluded that my dark side is my ‘Se’ … only to know that I was wrong. An inferior function does not equal to bad traits; it only implies a strength which one has less control or less conscious of it. INFJs extroverted sensing is much as a strength as their introverted intuition. They absorb everything, the good and the bad. Thus, it is a blessing and a curse at the same time. So if I want to know about my dark sides at all, I should care more on my ‘shadow functions’. Basically, it is all the opposite of normal functions. So, the darkest of all for an INFJ is the ‘Si’.

Typology introduces me to vultology, socionics, and all the jargons. Then suddenly psychology, neurology, technology, and sociology are all emerged and tangled in the web for science. Basically, the idea is that human psyche manifests itself in physical and facial expressions. However, it may seem unnatural to watch human expressions without context. Therefore, what happens inside (neurology) and outside (sociology, technology) may have the same importance with the notion of ‘psychology’ itself.

Interestingly, there is a webtool to determine one’s personality only by sample of one’s twitter posts, webpage or blog. I think it is fascinating. Just check it out in http://www.typealyzer.com. More tools can be found in http://www.uclassify.com. I cannot help to giggle when the tool asserted that one of my blog posts had been written by a 65-year-old man. But I guess it only justifies the widely held notion that INFJs are social chameleons; thanks to ‘Fe’ function. This is also confirmed further by the tests on 3 of my blogs; revealing ISFP, ISTP, and ESTJ respectively … still hiding this INFJ chameleon.