Self"ishness"

Today I learned a lot more about myself and those around me. That is I "learned" a lot. It is important for me to make the distinction between learning and "learning." The former requires one or sometimes multiple experiences actually teach me more about myself, others, or the world around me. The latter is merely a learning that is limited in the fact that it requires no real encounter with an insight or piece of knowledge. For example: I "learned" through reading a book about love and life, that a parent must give constant assurance and forms of affection to an infant. Simple right? No, not really. Not until I become a parent who has a child, and sweats and prays over he or she, hoping he or she will develop into a confident and secure adult will I be able to learn (without quotations) this important fact. Although this may seem irrelevant to the rest of my post, I want each of you to keep in mind that everything you come to understand has more than one layer; the layer of "learning" and learning. I am finding this to be true in the case of the sundry insights of the day.

My mother has always been a huge encourager of discovering oneself and how one views and interacts with others. To put it simply, she loves personality tests. Although tiring at times; I freaking love this sort of thing as well. The last Socratic test came during this past Thanksgiving. It is a very unique and complex assessment of humans who fit into one of 9 different categories. My mother and I spent a fair amount of time dissecting this specific test in hopes of finding exactly what number I am. After a couple hours I came to the conclusion I am a "5" or the Observer or Investigator. Since this may mean nothing to you I encourage you to go to this link: http://www.enneagram.com/index.html and find out what I mean. I would also LOVE it is you posted a comment on my wall telling me what your type is...

I decided to stop writing this post last night, because I was clearly getting tired and unfocused. So I do apologize for the abrupt transition, but here are my new thoughts. So last night I said that I learned a few neat things about myself and one of them was my Enneagram Personality type. It is interesting to see now how I view others. I have found myself assessing my friends and family members and complete strangers wondering what their type is. It is knid of neat to see. For instance, I always knew that when I was feeling good I had a very childlike spirit, wanting to do many many things and not really committing to anything completely, but jumping around from one to the next. That is because a type 5 tends to act like a seven when they are not stressed. Conversely, I act like an 8 when I am anxious or frustrated. Therefore I become combative and angry. I can look for some sort of argument or means through which to vent. I am also very prone to have a lot of knowledge and insight on various aspects of life and am frequently seeking more understanding. This can lead me to be very closed however, and keep my knowledge to myself and withhold my time, energy, or self from others. My parents and I were joking that I am a bit like Gollum and treat myself as My Precious sometimes :). Lastly, each Enneagram type correlates to a specific "Deadly Sin". My typical sin is greed, which makes sense. So I guess I am a greedy SOB.

I also read "the Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman yesterday and realized that I am mostly someone who receives love through Acts of Service, and Secondly, I enjoy Quality Time. Once again, I would LOVE to hear what your love language is. I really want to be able to learn how the people around me feel loved. What a neat experiment it would be to cater the way I love others specifically. The reason this is important to me is because I constantly find myself frustrated when I do something for another and don't get the reaction or result I hoped for. I someone says something really nice about me and yet I still may not feel like they really care about me. So....I want to learn how to love others better. Needless to say, I "learned" a lot about myself and am excited to see the ways in which these insights will come into play in my everyday in order that I may truly know them.