"Intricately woven" and "mysterious"—I'm the coolest!

Sometimes people are proud of very stupid things, things that are out of their control. I am constantly guilty of this. Being tall is a good example: I'm 5' 8 1/2" tall, and damn proud of it. I didn't have anything to do with growing to this height, other than not putting my legs in front of a buzz saw as a child. I mean, I drank a lot of milk so as to have strong bones and teeth, but that doesn't make it an accomplishment. Yet I take pains to point out that I am "tall for a woman" when ever the topic of height comes up. What is that? It's not even really an advantage in life for women to be above average height. Except at parades, I suppose. Unless there's Shriners. Blast those Shriners and their tiny cars and not-quite-amusing antics!

Anyway. Another good example of misplaced pride is personality. I mean, I took the Keirsey Temperament Sorter a few years ago (there's a less specific version here here—it's free, so take it and let me know the results because I'm interested) and found out that I'm an INFJ. We're the rarest of the 16 personality types (less than 2% of the population), and I'm kinda proud of that. I didn't want to be an SF or an ST because they're somewhat more common (about 40% of the population each). But it's not like I could have changed the outcome of the test without lying on the questions, which I didn't. There's really no way for me to change my introspective, borderline empathic, apparently somewhat self-centered nature to make it SF or whatever, so what's the point of being proud of it? All of the personality types are needed, and all are equally good. It's not like you get a free pass to the state pen if you're an ESFP. I don't know where the pride comes from, I don't understand this, but evidently, according to Keirsey, I'm fated to ponder it for the rest of my life.

Great.