First, let's begin with a question:
Are you an agitator or a soother?
You've heard people begin their polar grouping of people with "there are two kinds of people..." This is one of them, but bear with me.
In the movie Exorcist II, there's a scene that is the only scene I can clearly remember. It involves Linda Blair and a room full of swarming locusts. I am unsure of the exact premise, but the significance of the swarm had to do with her vulnerability to being possessed as she had when she was a preteen in the first movie. The locusts may have been an indicator of spiritual activity, or a precursor, but at any rate, the only way for her to rebel possession was to resist the brushing of the wings.
By this wording, I would take it to mean that the reason locusts swarm is similar to the reason a calm group of onlookers can become a raging, rioting mob. The "brushing of the wings" may be a way the locusts get themselves riled up. By comparison, if Linda Blair were able to resist the agitation stirred up by the swarm that engulfed her, they would calm down and stop fluttering about in that destructive manner that has granted them Biblical fame. In that scene of the movie, that's exactly what they did. While she held up her arms to shield her face and while she had no way to escape them, she resisted whatever spiritual strength was at work, and soon enough the locusts were all resting at her feet.
Are you looking for an agitator or a soother?
All I can tell you is how I am. I'm an agitator. I am high energy, bi-polar at times, anxious, hyper, you name it. I am like a swarm of locusts. Locusts by themselves do little harm, but when they gather in clusters, they can destroy entire villages.
Theory: Those who are soothers by nature may agitate others in time, because their calm may be taken as cold indifference. Those who are agitators by nature may soothe others in time, if they are allowed at first to show their nature and not hide it out of fear.
I am looking for someone to whom I can show this swarm within me, someone who will not run away from it because of the initial fear it may cause. Even better, I am looking for someone who will walk right into the thick of the swarm and not be given over to the chaos he sees, but to stand firm in the tumult because he knows that beyond the cloud of buzzing wings there are only small and intriguing creatures. He will not be riled up as I am, not to fight the illusion of fire with fire, but be patient with me.
Being hyper and feeling often like a wheel spinning so fast it looks like it's barely moving, is like having a stutter. You don't like talking to people because they feel awkward around you, you require more time and patience to understand than most people allow. Some people who stutter stop talking altogether to avoid embarassment and humiliation.
Question: Soothers are good at what they do, and they are needed. But is it a fair exchange? What do the soothers get from putting themselves in such a precarious state?
Chaos is not the whole of me, nor of any agitator. But we do tend to shake up the worlds of those around us, we tend to do things that upset, distress, unheave or dismantle. Underneath that is a longing for calm, for peace, but we may not be able to find it in ourselves. It is our first impression, the first way we may be seen by others, and because of this we may be written off as emotionally unstable or mentally sporadic. And not everyone can handle that, nor should they be expected to. Just as I consider myself to be fairly picky, there are only so many people who can handle me, because I can be a frustrating person to love.
Are you an agitator or a soother?