Roles
Who am I? A question for the ages, and one asked too infrequently. We don't often stop and think about what our role is in this life. We just exist, care for our needs and family and try to have as good a time doing so as possible. But, in the process we tend toward certain behaviors and thinking patterns. Those can generally be described as:
Idealists
Realists
Cynics
Optimists
Pessimists
Dreamers
Pragmatists
Romantics
While I'm not a psychologist, it seems clear our upbringing and environment play a key role in these tendencies. The WAY we were raised, what kind of household we maintain, what friends we choose, and how we like to spend our free time.
In popular culture, we tend toward celebrating the romantics and optimists, dreamers and idealists, but in reality, most of us do better in life as realists, cynics and pragmatists. This is a result of a life that commodifies everything to maximize profit and efficiency. If we stop and stare at trees all day, we're not exactly productive. Love of nature busies no factory, after all.
In truth, we all exhibit some of these traits at one time or another. Just in varying quantities. What we need, or think we need, can become dominant in the moment. But those small moments belie the iceberg of who we are at our core. We will always return to our center.
I used to turn my nose up at personality tests. But someone convinced me to give the Briggs-Myer a shot, and I was surprised at how prescient the results were.
The test pegged me as INFP-T, a turbulent mediator, tending toward deep emotion, idealism and individuality. To say that I'm a dreamer and drawn to creativity is an understatement. I can and do build whole societies in my head and can live for hours just in imagination. I eschew rules and meaningless structure frustrates me to no end, though I have the capacity to understand and follow rules. There's a tiny glimmer of pragmatist in me. This lets me benefit when it REALLY matters to be obedient. That 'T'-trailer (turbulent) indicates that I am sensitive to emotions and self-doubt and an introspective tendency to overanalyze EVERYTHING.
Truth, beauty, love. And analysis, apparently.
Being this way makes it difficult at times to be a star-shaped peg in a square-peg world. Leading to frustration and sometimes even apathy.
Fellow romantics and dreamers can be hard to spot because from about age 5 we begin our institutionalization that will prepare us to become the factory workers and ditch diggers consumerism needs us to be. But if you look close, you can find the tell-tale signs of a fellow creative. Not the blue hair or nose-piercing. Those are crowd-followers, trying to be anti-establishment. Nothing more. No, the signs manifest in little ways— a person will hum or sing, you see them dance a little when no one is watching, or they will share some work of art they made or story that spilled out of them.
Creatives in a productivity-centric world just cannot help themselves.
Don't get me wrong. We NEED the pragmatists of the world. We want and love our airplanes and love them landing safely even more. Our whole world structure is made by men and women who analyze, predict, study and build.
The long and the short of it is: embrace who you are. Love yourself and accept your strengths. You can be anything, you just can't do everything. Even if the world demands it, accept your limits and acknowledge that you don't HAVE to be.
Thanks for reading and sharing my beautiful lie.
— Go back home and read MORE by Wolf Inwool
— Visit the archive
I welcome feedback at my inbox
