BitterSweetLife

At points in my life, I've been a sucker for 'personality tests' like the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. It was always entertaining to type in my data, click the analyze button, and, depending on the day, discover that I was a world-beating ENFJ or some less flattering melancholy artist type. But as interesting as it was to learn about my genius-potential (or my need for antidepressants, as the case might be), it seems like the experience inadvertently begged a deeper question. Why is self-knowledge so highly valued?

Forget the temperamental outcomes. Why did I even want to know? Why do any of us?

The fact that we are easily captured by the 'personality' issue is hard to deny. Go on and admit it, you're definitely tempted to check out the Keirsey link if you haven't already. But why are we so easily fixated with the question of personality? And why does the question exist? You would almost have to conclude that we are a people who do not know ourselves. When we sincerely try to “self-monitor,” we usually flounder. Occasional self-revelations are never the final word. And much of the time we prefer to disguise what exploration could reveal.

It’s strange that self-knowledge is so elusive. I know people in their fifties who are still discovering new things about themselves, and I suspect this is not unusual. The secret of personality seems to be one we can never quite unravel, a veil we can never fully pull aside.

Of course, forward strides are made. We meet someone who understands us, shows us a deeper side of ourselves. We go through a defining experience, and emerge enlightened. We take a helpful test, and gain some fractional insight. But there are always other facets undiscovered, reactions we didn’t expect, inclinations we don’t understand.

Deepening the confusion is the issue of life purpose in relation to personality—How does who I am pertain to what I ought to be doing? And what if I’m not doing it? Does personality shape my calling, or does my profession take precedent? American culture tends to favor doing over being, but such knee-jerk pragmatism is hardly the end of the story.

Thickening the plot still further is the gulf between "ideal" and "real." How do I explain the contrarieties of my own nature, and the constant war between my cherished self-image and the workaday version I’m forced to live with? Which is really me? We might (mis)apply Hegel’s dialectic here, with dizzying effect: My ideal (thesis) clashes with my experience (antithesis), forcing a confused meeting (synthesis), and what emerges is fully neither. Who am I?

Frost’s poem seems to fit:

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.