On Jung’s Thoughts Pertaining to the Relationship Between Introvert and Extravert: A metaphor.

On Jung’s Thoughts Pertaining to the Relationship Between Introvert and Extravert: A metaphor.

 

The Introvert stands upon a feeble string, one cast over a cobblestone city street fifty stories down between two office buildings. He arrives almost at his destination on the other building when he is met with the extravert. The extravert thinks the introvert mad, and he warns him not to fall, so loudly that the introvert remembers his own height.

The extravert too aspires to reach the opposite roof, yet his is a different path. He must descend one stairwell, navigate the busy street, and climb the other stairwell. To him, the introvert’s insanity is mere hubris in search of a shortcut.

What he fails to recognize is that both paths are equally dangerous. Each stairwell is abounding with doors that may yield to a security guard. The streets are populated with criminals, and traffic is only made more chaotic by the attempts made to regulate it.

The introvert has nearly arrived at his destination, but he wavers at the last moment and often falls in the face of the extravert. If by some miracle his fall should be softened by a roof of cloth and a cart of fruit, he may choose to never endeavour the tightrope again. What he forgets is that his path, however feeble, requires the greatest degree of personal discipline from him, where the extravert needs not subtlety but perseverance and cleverness.

What is most important amidst what he has forgotten upon impact is that he had nearly reached the very goal that the extravert himself aspired towards. What was the extravert doing standing in his path? However feeble the introvert may appear in the face of the extravert’s judgement, it is always his discipline and the natural charge of his task that lends him such a feebleness. Even a word of self-justification, prior to arrival at the coveted haven of the opposite roof, would be just enough breath to knock the introvert off balance and into oblivion. Yet what dweller upon the street can ever begin to understand the mind of the tightrope walker? They from the street call him mad, yet here they are like a crowd that runs up and down the angular stairwell trying to grab a delicate string that hangs from the ceiling and runs down the core of the stairwell. They cannot grab it without attempting the jump across the chasm at the core of the stairwell, and in so doing they would risk a fall that none of their peers could or would try to assuage or forestall.

 

Dm.A.A.