After taking the Enneagram personality test for the seventh time I decided my seven identical results must be fairly accurate – I’m an overachiever. Right. I feel like the character in a Far Side cartoon…
Home videos show that I have always been this way. In one infamous family video my two sisters are dancing around to Raffi on the record player shouting, “Daddy watch me spin!!” I’m in the corner saying, “Dad, when you have a chance I’d like to show you my most recent spelling test over here…”
There are, I imagine, people who can be different personalities in different occasions. Not to the point where they lack integrity – just where in varied social settings they high or lowlight different traits to best adapt to the situation at hand. They are chameleons.
If you haven’t seen it and can’t get and watch it within the next 24 hours, read it here immediately.
For now: Bob (Bill Murray) a paranoid hypochondriac with OCD tendencies is directed to take a “vacation from his problems” by his psychiatrist, Dr…LEO….MARRvin!! (Richard Dryfus). Bob takes the literal approach. He halts all activity associated with his formal self using the vacation card as his excuse. It works; he’s cured.
There’s something to that – that easy excuse for deciding not to be who you usually are – for taking a little break from our habits. For Bob it was to cure a bad case of paranoia and acute ODC. But I wonder if I/we could execute a variation on the therapy – if we wouldn’t all benefit from a little vacation from ourselves?
We aspire to depart from our “type” all the time. “God I wish I could be like her” or “What I wouldn’t do to stop doing __________.” What if all we needed was a metaphorical Dr.’s order – a Lenten-like promise to ourselves to stop acting one way and start acting another. To say, “for the next six weeks I will rely on everyone else in my life to make plans.” Or, “from now until next Thursday I will make direct eye contact and smile at every man I see.”
We’d set a time limit, chose some do’s and don’t’s and see how the cards fell. I’d replace all cheesy bar one-liners with mysterious vacant stares and stop making sure my shoes match my belts. Maybe I’d pout a little, or do that thing French girls do where they say no when what they mean is yes. I wouldn’t return the phone calls of people I frankly don’t feel like talking to, and I’d wear strange hats wherever I go. Or perhaps I’d give it more thought and come up with some actions that actually mean something. Either way, I’d stop spending all day on gchat – as that can only help.
I’m not quite sure what it would cure me of, if anything. But if a lovable fictional character with incredibly quotable lines (I’m a SAILOR!!! Look! I SAIL!) is any indication then maybe, just maybe, forcing ourselves to not be ourselves would teach me more about ourselves than always being ourselves ever could.
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Well, I vote yes on wearing crazy hats every day. Can’t go wrong with that plan.
Don’t you already do that? I swear I saw you in a crazy hat last week.