A Small Adjustment to "On My Personality"
In "On My Personality" I delved quite deeply into my personality. I want to make one small adjustment though.
Thinking of myself as an "open conceptual explorer" sounds cool. But I'm not sure that gives you or me a good grasp on what I'm actually made for. I think "wanderer" might be a better classification. And, thinking about this, it fits pretty darn well.
I wanted to be an international traveler bouncing around to different countries. This isn't really feasible now because of my health issues, but I'm still drawn to it when I see other people doing it while teaching English as a second language. I like have deep and long conversations that wander around wildly between subjects. Most people have a difficult time with this, but it's the best way to keep me from being bored. I do the same thing with writing and reading. What am I reading about right now? A weird mix of a bunch of different things. What do I write about? A weird mix of a bunch of different things. I wander. I wander physically and mentally. To wander is defined as to walk or move in a leisurely, casual, or aimless way. I was actually voted most watchable walk in high school because of my odd tendency to literally walk in a leisurely, casual, and aimless way. That's also a good description of my life as a whole. Here's a good poem that goes with it.
The Men That Don't Fit In
There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.
by Robert Service
It's a poem that fits me well, which is ironic considering it's about things not fitting.
I've had a series of conversations in Facebook groups and through email since posting "On My Personality" yesterday. I still haven't found a successful person with high openness and low conscientiousness. I feel like they must exist, but maybe not.
One of these conversations started with a woman asking me advice about her son who is struggling with a life direction and has a similar personality profile to mine. I wish I had some good advice, but I haven't solved the problem yet. Wanderers aren't really made to fit into society, especially modern society. Gypsies and that lifestyle have kind of disappeared. You always have some of it because some people are built that way. And, there are some lifestyles that are geared toward it, like traveling musicians, comedians, speakers, magicians, and such. But, I think you would find that the successful ones are quite conscientious rather than just wandering from town to town and trying to survive while exploring and experiencing without plan or direction. This is never a good path to success.
Anyway, I'm sticking with trying my four-pronged plan from Jordan Peterson, Viktor Frankl, Karen Horney, and Carl Jung. I'm sure that my experiments will prove at least some of it wrong and/or not useful. But, maybe some of it will work. Then, eventually, maybe I would have a good answer for that woman and her son.
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