My Type

January 29, 2024

Greetings from a typo,

“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”   Groucho Marx

I thought of this when someone was trying to identify if I was a certain personality type. This kind of filter has been laid over me dozens of times, I almost always resent it before I respect it.  I’ve been through many such assessments, from Myers Briggs to Enneagram to DISC and a host of less in-depth assessments.  In each case I find myself bristling when dropped into any kind of slot, thinking that surely I must be more complicated than what can be defined this way.

People who know me will say “Well of course you react like that, you are a Blue AMTSP with Venus rising. Your kind always behaves that way.”  Well.

I’ll also confess that I can never remember what category I am in, so sometimes when it comes up in conversation I just lie about it, which makes it even more fun.  People say “Oh, you’re a Rooster/Marsupial, I could tell by the way you hold your Uno cards.”  I’m pretty sure this is a venial sin, but it gives me such deep satisfaction I can’t help it.

But the truth always catches up.  A friend of mine once told me something and then, based on my personality type, predicted (accurately it turns out) how I would react.  Also, predicted I would resent being predicted accurately about it.  

On the one hand, we love knowing these traits about people.  We respect the science, we recognize the truth in it when we think about people we know. We value how it can make communication between people clearer, how we can teach and learn and just live, better, if we have an understanding of the personalities of others.

But some of us, especially Gemini’s, resent being put into pigeonholes.  Or maybe because of the age I grew up in, or because I’m a man, or I was raised in a certain religion, or maybe it’s because I’m white.  Oops, I skidded into another whole thing there.

In spite of my reaction to being labeled, I could hardly be called a non-conformist.  If I were, it would irritate me to labeled as a non-conformist. See how this goes? It’s a terrible spiral. 

Of course I love making guesses about other people, even when I lack information, expertise, or judgment.  It’s so much easier to be unfair.  And we have so many places to start, even beyond well-researched personality types.  Age, religion, politics, gender, parental status, race, sexual orientation, cultural upbringing, body type, heritage, marital status, tax bracket, intro/extrovert, dominant hand, birth order and musical preference.  There’s more, I know, and if I were more of a perfectionist I would complete it.

In truth, I am weary of all of this.  I understand how these segments get created, and often for good reason, but lately I’ve felt like it’s in every conversation and I’ve had enough.  Especially because it hasn’t felt like being able to categorize other people has been helping lately.

This confession, which is probably unnecessary since you know I am a Boomer and we all behave this way, is made with a purpose. I know that understanding someone’s personality type is different than just assuming something because they are short or have an accent or are a certain skin color or ask for a certain pronoun, or fly an American flag in their yard.

Recently I was in a meeting with a group of writers.  It happened that all of them wrote the same kind of fiction, and I do not.  It’s not the kind of difference that shows up in SAPA or in any government research.  But before I knew any of them, I put them in a certain category of person.  I’m not proud of it, and maybe that’s where the weariness comes from.

Instead, it turns out they are writers, and they are not defined by just that title, or their preferred genre, or preferred pronoun or personality type. To see them through only one facet of the prism is wrong for me and them.  I’m grateful I was with them long enough to learn that.

Margaret Meade said “Remember you are absolutely unique.  Just like everyone else.”  It was not meant to be ironic, it is just the understated truth.  We are a fantastic, complicated, contrary, beautiful, collection of beings, who sometimes are similar to others and just as often not, and in either case those definitions don’t say who we are or what we are capable of being. 

Hope this finds you breaking the barrier,

David

Copyright © 2024 David Smith