The straight and the narrow

Sometimes, I wonder if I'm stunting myself intellectually because I confine most of my social interactions to people with similar mindsets. Talking about personality types yesterday brought to light the fact that most of my friends are melancholic, and all are Christian. Make that Pentecostal Christians.

I justify myself by pointing to the fact that I'm not a big picture person. I like to look at the micro view, to notice miniature details and hidden patterns. Which means that I would rather explore and deconstruct all possible points of view from between A to B than to get to know A to Z. This explains my aversion to foreign languages and traveling, along with the above-mentioned observation on taste in friendship.

This narrow-mindedness has the guilt-inducing consequence of a practically non-existent evangelistic record. Yes, I've been bred and indoctrinated in a true-blue Pentecostal church where we're reminded every week to win souls. Yet my navel-gazing nature still clashes with the whole emphasis on an outward focus and outreach. Sometimes I wonder (albeit passingly) what it'll be like to belong to a more introverted denomination.

Anyway, the point that got me thinking about all this was when I told Fergus that he (no, not Fergus) was one non-mel person I could really talk to. He's a phleg-chol.

"So how did you two connect? Was it on the chol level [since I'm a mel-chol]?"
"Actually no, not at all. I think it was more mel to phleg."
"How? Phlegs are passive."
"Well, both types are introverted. And phlegs tend to run deep, and depth is drawn to depth."

It looks like for now, all my posts are going to circle back to this subject no matter where they start out.