As a Sensor, you are not necessarily any more practical, more athletic, or more realistic than iNtuitives. Likewise, you don’t have to be any less intelligent, bookish, rational, enlightened, or whatever else that oversimplified stereotypes may assert, both in books and online. Being a Sensor simply means that you see the world primarily in reference to your own experiences, while iNtuitives tend to view life in terms of concepts and ideas. Sensors consider all ideas and concepts in reference to their own gathered store of experience, rather than the other way around. Both are needed, and as with all the letters, everyone does both. Yet Sensors view everything in terms of their own experiences first and foremost, before drawing conceptual ideas from those experiences.
This focus on actual experiences naturally results in seeing all the world as a great puzzle composed of separate, interlocking puzzle pieces. Every piece connects to its neighbors, and yet each exists as a distinct memory with its own meaning and applications. Sensors tend to focus on each individual piece of life, people, situations, and experiences, each in its own place, rather than focusing on the overall whole that they’re part of. Everything is a distinct puzzle piece with its own place, and can be placed and understood independently of any other piece. This often causes Sensors to appear more concretely minded, as they focus on the distinct puzzle pieces of actual experiences.
However, just because Sensors’ thoughts and opinions tend to be more concrete, they are not necessarily any more accurate. Because they focus on the actual experiences that they’ve lived, the implications and opinions that they draw from their experiences are heavily influenced by the context in which their experiences occurred. Sensors can often be the last ones to see just how much everything they believe might change drastically as soon as it is viewed through the lens of different experiences. Two different Sensors may have ironclad, perfectly rational convictions about opposing beliefs, each unable to see the world via the context of the other’s entirely different experiences.
Yet a concerted and deliberate effort to work on understanding the underlying concepts behind their experiences, rather than simply focusing on the experiences alone, can help to gradually bring a Sensor’s portion of the puzzle more and more in line with the rest of reality. It can be tempting for Sensors to try to shoehorn all concepts and ideas to conform to their own experiences, but as they instead humble their opinions to adapt to simple conceptual sense, they’ll be able to see all their own experiences in every possible light. They’ll grow ever more able to easily understand the entirely different experiences of others, and more ready to see new experiences from a wider point of view without trying to force them to fit any preexisting set of beliefs.
Viewing everything in terms of actual experiences leads to an appreciation for all the good that has already been accomplished or accumulated both in one’s own life, and in the world in general. This causes Sensors to frequently focus on trying to maintain and protect all the good in things, people, and themselves as they already are. Unless someone stands up for the good in things, then precious opportunities, tools, and points of view may be lost, leaving everyone weaker by the loss of insight and ability offered by things no one would stand up for. Yet Sensors must be especially careful not to end up seeking to protect everything unilaterally, or else they’ll find themselves standing up for detrimental or even malicious things in the world or in themselves. It’s good and necessary to try to keep the good in everything, but it is harmful to try to cling to unhealthy, false, or cruel attitudes or traditions simply because they’re already there.
Sensors must also be careful not to fall into the trap of behaving as if the way things are now is the way they’ve always been, and always will be. Such an attitude leads to defending all the bad parts of the current culture or situation alongside all the good. This is not to say that Sensors necessarily fear change; they may be perfectly happy with change, as long as it serves to better protect the good that already is. Healthy Sensors may in fact seek out change for just this purpose: to do away with harmful things in order to safeguard beneficial ones. Their focus on experiences gives them a keen awareness of things as they are currently, but also makes it harder for them to be sure where things might end up in the future.
As always, both Sensing and iNtuition are needed, and both can be equally healthy or unhealthy. Healthy Sensors should seek to see things through interconnected concepts and not just through the lens of experience, yet they should also allow their main focus to be on the individual, experiential puzzle pieces of life. As they seek to see the world through concepts as well as experience, they’ll grow more able to see all the varied possibilities of things as they could be, which will only serve to help them maintain and enjoy the good in things as they already are. While numerous stereotypes portray Sensing as less academic, idealistic, or enlightened, all types can be intelligent or unintelligent, idealistic or pessimistic, each in their own unique ways.
Indeed, any attempt to live by experience without idealism is simply unhealthy and limiting. Such close-mindedness tends to come from disregarding all the varied experiences had by others besides oneself, even disregarding one’s own experiences if they don’t fit the mold of current attitudes. Healthier Sensing lives by more experience, not less, and therefore grows ever more idealistic and ever more practical in its enjoyment of everything. The more a Sensor lets themselves be a Sensor, the more enlightened, hopeful, and farseeing they’ll become in all their daily experiences.
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