“Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.”
~Kahlil Gibran.
The critical and necessary balance of life can be summed up in the above quote; a blend of both reason and passion achieves for us the dynamic, pliable life—a narrow way not so personally confining or destructive. It’s an expansive yet safe life.
And it’s here that we find the introverted thinker and the extroverted feeler within each of us pitted against the self—for each of us has qualities and personality traits of both the introverted thinker and extroverted feeler. The reasonable person within us is situationally introverted and thinking; the passionate person within us is situationally extroverted and feeling. Both moods are required, at their time. The key to life is picking the right blend of reason and passion for the right time.
As we negotiate life between the poles of reason and passion we note our results and mature accordingly—this is the hope. Neither one can hold sway for too long. We’d be dogmatic, either way, if we did.
It has been long held in my own train of thought: what if we could achieve the perfect blend of introversion and thinking, and extroversion and feeling—perfectly attuned at holding reason and passion at arms length for selective use—and never abuse them? Using either or both according to the given situation must be about self-mastery.
For the person advancing on the frontier of maturity and a continuing place regarding God’s best for them, this is not an unworthy goal.
The balance of wisdom dictates a gentle blend of both reason and passion in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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