The other day I realized something odd: I am not myself. I have never been myself. Nor could I ever consciously achieve selfhood because in the attempt I inevitably over analyze and find myself back at square one: self-less.
The Myers-Briggs personality test pins me as introverted, intuitive, thinking and judging, or INTJ, which, although seemingly accurate, is misleading at best. For those who need some refreshing, Myers-Briggs categorizes personality based on four psychological preferences, each lying on a spectrum between two ideal types each marked by a score of 30. For instance, the test considers me to be “moderately” introverted with a score of 14, as opposed to “moderately” extroverted (which would also yield a score of 14). But my scores for N, T and J nearly straddle the zero threshold between preferences. In other words, the majority of my results are hardly indicative of my actual personality, if not completely meaningless. And despite being labeled as an introvert, people have told me the opposite numerous times: “Introvert! Will, come on, you’re joking…”
How is it that in one moment I can crave quiet and solitude, and in the next, desire boisterous human interaction? I will return to this question shortly.
As The Guardian points out, personality traits do not come in binaries. That much is obvious. But even though Myers-Briggs places the individual on a spectrum between absolutes, it falls short of imagining how those numerical values manifest in the real world. I do not mean to say reputable personality typographies do a poor job examining certain behaviors associated with different psychological inclinations. In fact, they are often times astonishingly accurate. The problem is not so much its method of analysis and application of study than its underlying assumption that individual preferences are fixed — which, I can attest, is certainly not the case. By recasting the self as an ever-evolving summation of varying preferences, we might gain valuable insight into the true nature of personality.
Indeed humans are by nature indecisive and ambivalent, committed to lives of ups and downs whether we like it or not. So rather than adhering to a particular combination of four letters, we might leave typographies behind and join the undelineated ranks of the preferential straddler. This new category accounts for my own behavioral inconsistencies and leaves wiggle room for growth and self-exploration. Unlike conventional types, preferential straddlers do not combine the many colors of individual preference into an inert amorphous grey. Instead they permit contrasting character traits to exist simultaneously, rendering selfhood a summation of variable preferences that build off one another, which in turn provides room for a healthy degree of psychological slippage. In one year I may be an INTJ, and in the next, an ISFP. (Myriad studies on adaptive psychology support this idea.)
Point being, we humans are not confined to certain types; in fact, we hold a modest degree of agency over our personalities. This idea is crucial to understanding the generative process of self. If we can learn to take ownership over the different attitudes and behaviors we express, we can begin to consciously latch on to those characteristics that are more conducive to healthy, positive human interaction. Personality need not be a passive. For passivity only leads to complacency, which in turn, wears down the the social fabrics of community.
And yet the more I talk to others the more I grow convinced most people indeed behave in surprisingly consistent ways. In contrast, I repeatedly fail to latch onto any idea of my own self. I am consistently inconsistent, and thus paradoxical in nature, or perhaps just a little confused. But surely I am not the only one who grapples with this sense of insecurity.
That personalities frequently wobble, slip and jump around suggests that even those who behave in seemingly consistent ways share my confusion. My personality has always changed depending on the person I am with, as if every individual expects a certain behavior from me and I have no choice but to fulfill that expectation. For instance, I am consistently boisterous around some people, and timid around others. If my observation is in fact a shared reality, then each of us will encounter nothing but a world of predictable others. Perhaps the greatest irony of personality is that it takes another person to determine its mode of expression, further rendering Myers-Briggs a hopeless attempt at uncovering the true nature of self – which as we’ve seen, takes on a deeply communal form.
Returning to my original question, the answer should sound familiar: I am not myself, nor will I ever be. Selfhood is but an imaginary ideal that one can only ever strive towards. What matters most is the conscious act of self-creation itself, which proves fruitless unless one learns to first abandon all traditional typographies and their deeply flawed assumptions about human nature. Upon embracing the life of the preferential straddler, personality becomes a powerful tool for personal growth and empathic connection.
Then again, individual will falls short of defeating those selfish tendencies that relentlessly pull us apart. Only by recognising the community in every personality can we learn to embrace the real community that forever molds us into those selves we will never fully become.
Perhaps self-lessness truly is the first step toward a more selfless existence.
Will Evans is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at w.evans@cavalierdaily.com.
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