The Dreamers Within Us

Us INFPs are often unable to escape our own inner world. Almost unwillingly, we tend to get lost in our heads. Dreamers, people call us. But what’s life without dreams? How can we create reality if we don’t dream enough?

So much of what has shaped our world and continues to shape it began as a dream. An idea that came to life. A person who got lost in their head to the point where their thoughts became something tangible, giving birth to an idea that perhaps changed the world.

Without dreamers, the world would lose some of its spark. Without creatives, it would lose some of its soul. I’m not saying that other personality types aren’t creative. Creativity certainly isn’t exclusive to INFPs. But creativity and imagination are often strongly associated with us, and I believe our cognitive functions, particularly Fi and Ne, play a big role in that.

We feel deeply, and we tend to internalize what we feel. Our emotions, values, experiences, and observations become part of an enormous inner world. Then Ne takes those feelings, thoughts, and experiences and connects them to new possibilities, ideas, images, stories, and meanings. Our minds can feel like they’re constantly overflowing with ideas, ideas that don’t just come from us, but somehow become part of who we are.

Personally, I find myself daydreaming and getting lost in my head even when I’m supposed to be focusing on something else. Sometimes, a simple object can make me disappear into my own thoughts and forget my surroundings.  When I’m drawing, I can get so lost in what I’m looking at that I almost become the subject itself. When I’m writing poetry, I disappear into my head and into every word. There are moments when I don’t even feel like I’m thinking about what I’m writing anymore. I’m simply feeling it.

The funny thing is, we’ve been taught since childhood that daydreaming is a bad thing. At school, they would shake us back into reality whenever we drifted away.

But sometimes I wonder: what if the world needs a shake back into dreams rather than awake from them?

The world needs dreamers.

As I said in the beginning, dreamers are part of the soul of the world. And a world without a soul is a dead world. We connect the visible to the unseen. The tangible to the intangible. The logical to the illogical. The earthly to the divine. We take what cannot be touched and give it a shape that others can see, hear, read, or feel. In other words, we give love different spaces to wander in. We give birth to feelings and shape them into art.

So, as an INFP, don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed of getting lost in your head. Don’t let anyone convince you that your inner world is useless simply because it cannot always be seen.

Of course, we still have to come back to reality. We have responsibilities, and sometimes we need to ground ourselves. But don’t mistake being grounded for abandoning the place where your imagination lives. Because somewhere inside those dreams is your strength. The strength to see what others might overlook. The strength to imagine what doesn’t exist yet. The strength to create when others struggle to find meaning. And most importantly, the strength to shape the world and give it a little more life.

You, INFP, are life.

You are love.

You are beauty in a world where beauty can sometimes feel forgotten, and where life can become nothing more than the duty of passing time.

So keep dreaming.

Keep getting lost in your head.  Because perhaps the world doesn’t always need you to come back. Perhaps, sometimes, it needs you to bring something back with you.