I think more and more about personality types and how they inform how we move in the world. Those built for purpose, those built for connection, us with a predisposition for peace, us with a predisposition for battle, an insatiable desire for first, a banner labeled, ‘rightness,’ a banner labeled ‘labor,’ a banner labeled ‘wander,’ a banner labeled ‘legacy’ with a gold- standard grandparent as the guide. And we hold them high and fight for their freedoms while fighting for our own convinced that if everyone’s eyes were focused like our’s, the world would be so much better.
We never want to stop to consider the perplexing paradox of everyone everywhere desperately trying to get it right, to heal old hurt, to maintain safety in us and among us. The arrested development that keeps us stuck in a “when we act we are acting from goodness, when others act they act from something other than goodness” is a time loop playing out in every place at all times everywhere you can think of. The next phase beyond that stuckness is the terrible beautiful tenuous tight rope that we are all flesh sacks acting from our best selves as best we can and so is everyone else. There are very few evil people. There are many hurt people. They are even more people who simply do not see what we see and think like we think. And I do believe we were created like that for a purpose. For good work and good relationship in our difference and in our vision and in our willingness to put one foot in front of the other side by side. How tragic would it be to do otherwise? (Dear reader, this is my personality type shining through with a ”I really don’t want to hold my neighbor under the knife of rightness with a clipboard in hand” thinking. That is a total drag for me. Hard pass.)
Going to another country is a wonderful reminder of how differently we can all interpret the same raw materials of a life from day to day. How is that the hours feel different elsewhere? How is that time, the same old bag of 24 hours we get every day, shines differently and moves otherly somewhere across an ocean? And if our old friend Time can do that, well then what about that old human heart? What about those watchful weary eyes? How can daily bread rise and bake into so many versions of the exact same thing?
And will we rejoiced therein? (I kinda think I would like to rejoice therein, actually)
For trains to run and planes to fly there must be an understood code of co-existing. There must be a level of moving in, with and under fellow flesh sacks from the platform down the stairs to the train nach Friedrichsdorf just as the school children all let out for the afternoon. Life together is not our enemy. Life together is our teacher and our friend but some personalities will fight to the end to defeat it and claim the solitary as sacred and the fellow flesher as foe. That’s hurt, that’s fear, that’s something other than who we were written to be inside this play of plays. (Hopie’s personality leaning right there)
I sat waiting for my next flight thinking of the many things I’ve accomplished thus far in my life. Some may say not enough, some may think it’s been far too much (she’s avoiding something). I sat there thinking of work and achievements and accomplishments and they are great and I’ve loved what I’ve done (mostly), but nothing for me is so satisfyingly beautiful as the exquisite light of just being. An afternoon in a garden, my birthday on El Mirador San Nicolas just looking at the Alhambra and drinking beer with my friends, at camp at Song School by the river talking songs, on a picnic in the mountains with my family dappled sunlight, in the sun beside the Seine in the springtime blossoms blooming, in my yard facing westward in my camp chair, Jon beside me. My personality likes those moments like that infinitely more than succeeding and ribbons. I don’t know if it’s me or a version of me I created. I just know the exquisite lightness of being and it’s richness and beauty. I just know that weeks in Germany with old friends from forever are my treasure, my thanksgiving, my insatiable pursuit of joy and beauty together in moments inside hours dependent on the soul.