Know Thyself?

According to Wikipedia and the Greek writer Pausanias, "The Ancient Greek aphorism 'know thyself,' is one of the Delphic maxims and was the first of three maxims inscribed in the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi." It is probably first because most of us will never get to #2 if we spend any serious effort at figuring out how to know ourselves. It’s a disgusting job, but someone has to do it.

Take me, for example. Back in the 80s, I took a required career development course that included the infamous Myers-Briggs “personality inventory” test. The end result was a printout of my personality characteristics that, honestly, stunned me. Back then, a very primitive mini-computer determined that I was an INTP (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving). I had NEVER thought of myself as introverted and that hyper-important aspect to my personality was worse than neglected, ignored, and abused for 60-some years.In fact, until I read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking last December, a book that was practically forced on my by two very perceptive friends, I had no idea what being introverted means. However, that 1980’s computer printout almost made me breakdown and cry in the middle of a very large class because it was, I felt, the first time in my life anyone actually knew me. And that was scary because I worked very hard for a lot of years not to be “known” by anyone.

More recently, I’ve tested (on the 16Personalities.com website) as an INTJ-T ( Introverted - 95%, Intuitive - 63%, Thinking - 91%, Judging - 75%) with a new quality (Turbulent - 76%). Supposedly, this INTJ personality can be summed up as "the Architect." This last character swap is interesting. A summary of the differences claimed, “The key difference between the INTJ and INTP in this respect is INTJs do accept leadership roles on occasion whereas INTPs do not." Honestly, that tracks. For most of my life, I took on management/leadership roles because I thought “that’s what a man does.” Sort of a version of “if I want this job done right, I have to be the one to do it.” Eventually, that attitude crushed the life almost completely out of me. When I left my electrical and manufacturing engineering career in 1991, I also made the unconscious decision to avoid any management assignments in dysfunctional organizations. For the last 15 years of my career, I began to take that decision more seriously at every turn of my working life: to the point that at one particularly difficult moment in my teaching career I stated that principle out loud in refusing a “promotion.” From then on, it was a conscious decision and a guideline I would not cross.

So, I guess it’s possible that my basic personality was altered by that realization? Something swapped me from Perceiving to Judging and did it in a not subtle way. Back in the 80s, that first Meyers-Briggs test found that I was hard-line on everyone of my four personality values. Many people are borderline on everyone of their personality traits, but not me. If you look at the trait percentages at the beginning of the paragraph above, you might notice that the Intuitive (N) trait, at 63%, is the closest I come to a borderline quality. In the 80s, I was in the 80-90% territory for 3 of my 4 INTP traits. Perception (P) was the exception, being somewhere closer to the line. So, something shifted in me at some point in my life. Honestly, I think it was for the good even if it cost me money, some authority, and promotional opportunities. None of those things mean much to me.

At 72, I am still exploring and learning about the first of my 4 or 5 "personality traits.” The first chapter of Quiet details the outright distain, distrust, dislike, and disgust that introverts produced from the Powers that Were in the 20th Century and I grew up in that atmosphere. It was not good enough to be a competent athlete, student, or worker. You needed to be excited, vocal, and authoritative in your convictions. To be successful, you needed to be a “leader” and to be noisy about it. I wasn’t excited about much of anything but mathematics and music when I was in high school and either I chose that moment or the moment chose me to escape into music. As a long-haired, hippy, musician outcast, the expectations of me were instantly lowered and I could be me to myself and the rest of the world made assumptions based on outward appearances and mostly left me alone. Later, I learned that to survive in the world of work and to provide for my family I would have to disguise myself as someone else and I did that for 40 years. Now, I’m having to study and spend a lot of time alone to remember who I am.