be greeted, psychoneurotics!

Came across this gem in the early summer and forgot to post it! Here it is now.


Be Greeted, Psychoneurotics!
a poem by Kazimierz Dabrowski

Be greeted, psychoneurotics! 

For you see sensitivity in the insensitivity of the world,

     uncertainty among the world's certainties.

For you often feel others as you feel yourselves.

For you feel the anxiety of the world, and

     its bottomless narrowness and self-assurance.

For your phobia of washing your hands from the dirt of the world,

     for your fear of being locked in the world's limitations,

     for your fear of the absurdity of existence.

For your subtlety in not telling others what you see in them.

For your awkwardness in dealing with practical things, and

     for your practicalness in dealing with unknown things,

     for your transcendental realism and lack of everyday realism,

     for your creativity and ecstasy,

     for your maladjustment to that "which is" and 

          adjustment to that which "ought to be",

     for your great but unutilized abilities.

For the belated appreciation of the real value of your greatness

     which never allows the appreciation of the greatness

     of those who will come after you.

For your being treated instead of treating others,

     for your heavenly power being forever pushed down

          by brutal force;

     for that which is prescient, unsaid, infinite in you.

For the loneliness and strangeness of your ways.

Be greeted!

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If you're not familiar with Dabrowski and his work, treat yourself to a little internet stroll--I recommend it especially highly if you're somewhat aspergian, "gifted"*, or otherwise unusually sensitive (Myers-Briggs INXXs represent).

Good places to start:

Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration

Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities

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* i.e., high IQ w/ asynchronous development