IDEALISM VS REALITY

 

I am a chronic idealist. I came to understand this about myself at a deeper level one year when I discovered the definition of different existent personalities. I found myself in the key characteristics of one of the rarest personality types called the INFJ personality, also known as the Advocate. INFJs are insightful, driven by a strong moral compass, intuitive and idealistic to a fault.

It sounds good but all that idealism has one huge drawback. Strong idealism can lead to unrealistic expectations and difficulty in handling life. A friend I made some years ago found it difficult to understand why such strong optimism would come out of my mouth when I was teaching lessons at Church but then would dissolve into tears in my private life. She said: “I don’t understand. This is not you”. She thought it was just a matter of maintaining positivity and I was failing. I couldn’t understand it either. I thought I was just weak. When I came across the definition of the INFJ personality some time later, it was like staring in the mirror.

I have tried since then not to let many people into my private world to see my vulnerabilities because even though I long to be understood, I feel constantly judged and yes my personality also struggles with judgment. Sometimes I feel like I am Jekyl and Hyde.

Because of my idealistic nature, I live in a cloud of faith. Pragmatic approach to problems is difficult. My intuitive trait focuses on the big picture and possibilities rather than concrete details. This has been the hardest trial of my last two years of bad health. My faith in everything I have ever believed in has been tested to the limit.

This is the difficulty: faith is believing in the unseen. It is idealism at its finest because it rarely manifests itself in reality. Things of the spirit are difficult to see, touch and deal with yet they are acutely real to the person who feels it in their soul. That’s me.

One of my favourite stories from the life of Jesus is when He and His disciples travelled toward Jerusalem and found themselves hungry. When He saw a fig tree in the way, He approached it and finding nothing on it but leaves, He cursed the tree that it would not bear fruit ever again. The fig tree withered away as He spoke (Matthew 21:17-20).

When His disciples marveled, Jesus delivered the greatest discourse on faith but at the same time the ultimate idealistic achievement ever: “Verily, I say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt  not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.” (v 21)

Now, when you think of a mountain, its density, its size, its weight, its evolvement through time, it makes the mountain the most concrete and impossible thing ever to be subject to the power of faith. Yet a man called the Brother of Jared did this very thing in ancient America when “he said to the mount Zerin, remove – and it was removed” (Ether 12:30). As we know, this man also saw the pre-mortal Christ as a result of his undaunting faith (Ether 3:9)

I have studied a lot about faith over the years and especially about its role in healing since I have suffered from bad health. I have been told in the scriptures that if I have faith I can be healed of anything (D&C 42:49-51). So strong is the power of faith that people in the meridian of time brought their sick into the streets and laid them on beds and couches so that a shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow them and heal them (Acts 5:12-15). Special miracles were also performed by the hands of Paul: “From his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.” (Acts 19:12)

This is what I call manifesting faith and it’s the kind of faith that I want and feel I should have as a Christian. Is it any wonder that my faith is being tested through the mountain called ‘pain’ that is obstructing my view? Some would call this mountain reality. To me it is an ideal to strive for.

Stay tuned. Perhaps this ideal will one day turn into reality. 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: No Man Knoweth the Hour by Liz Lemon Swindle)