We are each endowed, at conception, with a primal temperment. This is the initial raw material out of which our personality, identity and destiny will be formed. It is GIVEN. It is, of course, not a fixed, absolute structure. It will interact with the environment, even in the womb, and with our freedom in our beliefs, decisions, purposes and engagments. It is fluid and maleable, but not absolutely so. Eventually Lady Wisdom will lead us to befriend our given temperment...accept it, welcome it, guide it, sublimate it, compensate for it, educate it. But NOT deny, repress or even ignore it. It is most salutary to recognize our propensities, weaknesses, faults and failings as in part the result of a temperment that is given and that we can change only to some degree.
For example, Number 5 is inclined to thinking, reading, speculating and tends to detach from concrete life to reflect. This presents obvious positives and negatives. It can create a rich interior, thoughtful world. It can also tend to isolation and abstraction. My adolescence and early adulthood were largely happy and energized because I was always deeply into two or three good books: history, philosophy, psychology, literature. My own world was steady, safe, peaceful and monotonous: large family, school, some sports, and ordinary superficial adolescent male friendships. My actual life was not very interesting; but my life in literature was one fascination after another. In early adulthood I intuitively sensed a personal imbalance and realized it would be unhealthy for me to pursue an academic career although my talents and interests were in that direction. I soon married, we had children, and I worked in the real world as a school teacher, UPS supervisor and boarding home director. Fortunately my life was grounded and my life in abstraction limited.
Last year I was about 18 momths late with my 2020 tax returns. My son who does the returns gave me a clear, kind imperative: do not do another blog until you send me your paperwork. I laughed! He knows me. The next day I sent the receipts. I have been fortunate throughout my adult life in that demands and exigencies of life have kept me grounded...most of the time.
The enneagram is helpful in that it provides these paradigmatic tempermental types and can lead one to serendipity: "Wow! That is me! I am a five!" But it allows flexibility in that we then find a secondary type: "And I am also in some ways a six!" There is flexibility, creativity, fluidity in it. Much like our temperments themselves!
Please pardon my rash judgment, dear Reader, if you are yourself an afficionado of the Ennegram!
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