I read somewhere that one of the basic personality traits recognized in many people is a tendency towards either intrinsic or extrinsic processing. This is not the same as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, although there is some similarity.

Individuals who process their world on the intrinsic side of the gradient tend to see their circumstances as a product of their behaviors. Those on the extrinsic side interpret the world from the other side of things, feeling that their behaviors are a product of their circumstances.

I am very aware that I fall on the far end of the intrinsic side of this scale. I feel strongly that all negative or unsatisfactory events or circumstances in my life are ultimately a consequence of some decision I have made. This feels, to me, like taking responsibility, like standing up.

I tend to dislike people on the other end of this scale, and feel a physical revulsion when confronted with chronic victims. Thought and speech patterns such as If only X had done Y, I could have done Z drive me up the wall. People that feel like their circumstances have cornered them strike me as whiners. Spineless. Hardly human.

And generally, I've always understood these leanings in myself to be a good thing. An asset. Success guaranteed.

Then Wednesday I went onshore to get my foresail repaired. I was on a soaring bout of mania, floating two feet off the pavement. The repairman was all the way out on Stock Island, an area which, unawares to me, is fairly far from downtown Key West where I had come onshore. The cab driver told me the drive would be at least $20.

All I had was a twenty, so I mentioned that we may need to stop at an ATM so I could pay the full fare. He seemed a little grouchy, but was more bitter about ATM fees and the man trying to get us down than he was about my obstacles in terms of proper payment.

He drove me around for quite some time, running the meter to about $23 and then turning it off altogether. In the end he insisted on just the $20 as payment.

The sail repairman was not in his office. His neighbor (a motor repairman) greeted me enthusiastically, led me about the Marina looking for the sail guy, and eventually even loaded me on his scooter and drove me down to the guy's boat to see if he was home. When we couldn't find him, the motor repairman, James, led me into his office to use the phone.

James arranged to drop my sail off with the proper repairman, Tim, when he returned to his office. He then gave me a lift, on his scooter, to the bus stop and insisted that I take $3 from him so I would have fare. I was reluctant and kept saying I'd just find an ATM but he brushed all of that aside.

I took the bus into Key West and began walking towards the marina where my kayak was docked. And that's when I catch myself thinking that there must be something incredibly likable and influential about me because everyone seems to constantly make my life so easy. I was actually taking the credit for other peoples' kindnesses.

Now granted I was on a magic mania carpet that was roaring past cloud nine at a breakneck pace. But still... I'm responsible for other peoples' kind behaviors? The notion was so absurd that I laughed out loud to myself in the street for a few seconds.

I thought about Mr. Bounderby, Charles Dickens' self-made man from the novel Hard Times. He was always lecturing less fortunates about pulling themselves up from their boot-straps, telling them to grab life with both hands and make themselves into what they want to be. Just like he did, you know. Bounderby, the self-made man. And then it turns out he's been on a generous pension from some removed great grandma or something ever since he was a boy. And he just sort of puts it out of his mind.

I laughed out loud again, this time with a few people looking. And then I tried taking it back, this obscene pride lurking in my mind you know, tried shoving it down into the bowels of weird emotion from whence it came. And failed. Because I really believe this nonsense.

And this is how I identified that at that moment I was being piloted by my lower self, with the higher self undoubtedly off on some subconscious vacation basking in the absence of responsibility.

And so I laughed out loud again, and climbed into my kayak.