The problem with all of those personality tests, though, is that they boil us down to four letters (ENTJ!) or an animal (otter!) or, most recently, a color (orange is my new black!), and we find ourselves trying to retrofit our awkward pieces into those awfully tight spaces.
Take...me, for example. If you're short on time, just study the "information" between the parentheses and you'll know what you need to know about me. I get a boost of energy from crowds, am comfortable trusting my intuition, am not terribly mushy and, uh, am represented by a color that really shines in October!
. . . or so these expert-approved tests tell me.
How to explain, then, my regular need for solitude? And where is nature in all of this? I don't think any of these tests explores our relationship with the out of doors.
"Out of doors." There's a phrase that begs a turn or two. We have become, I'm afraid, a society that prefers our doors closed, thank you. As a result, we've got a toxic group of people in Washington, many of whom refuse to see what or who it is that sits on the other side of their own doors. So, instead, they keep those doors closed, because it is simpler, less ambiguous, and what is expected from their most vocal (and monied) constituents.
The story goes that the journalistic term "deadline" came from the Civil War, when troops were thinned to the point of needing to find new ways to keep the captured enemy contained. Placed in slap-dash structures (most often, behind fences or stockades), prisoners were shown a line in the dirt--the deadline--and told that, if they crossed it, they'd be dead.
Nearly 150 years later, we still tell people to stay inside their lines, to behave accordingly, to be who it is we expect them to be, the implicit threat of exclusion or derision or removal of support always hanging in the air.
We haven't come very far, have we?
There is an "us versus them" mentality that comes with all of these labels, a strange willingness to buy into the standardized formula rather than muddle into the mess of getting to really know people--ourselves included.
I'm ready for a liberation, for a skeleton key that opens all the doors. I'm ready for someone to insist that we let in some fresh air, that we mix it all up until we look like a toddler's finger painting--messy and feral and pure again.
I think it's long past the time for people to once again trust their own guts--rather than the polls or the experts or the personality quizzes--and start meeting each other where they are, lines in the sand be damned.
I love you, Jane
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