Whoooo!! What a wild week it has been, you know how you can’t know the extent of how strong or weak you can be until life forces you into such situations to help you see, you think things can’t get any tougher but pellets in your face keep getting bigger and bigger until they become boulders? But even in that, I saw elements of God’s grace and the strength of the Almighty just keeps becoming more and more perfect in every single one of my weaknesses. I’m so glad and I’m so grateful, my heart is just filled with praise right now because I know the things I hope for are here even though I can’t see them yet. I wish I could share with you the joy in my heart and I pray everyone reading this find joy this profound.It’s M for butterflies (Don’t teach your kids that) and I have something I’d like to share today, it’s been stewing in the recesses of my mind for a while now and I think it’s time to let it out. Hopefully, it will find home with anyone who may need it.
With numerous researches on the subject, I am not in anyway trying to undermine the myer-briggs’ or Tim lahaye’s of this world, I think that knowing whether you’re an introvert, extrovert, sanguine, choleric, enfj or enfp is good and, all but in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter?
To better explain my point, I’ll start with me. I have never really fit into any mold, it’s a thing people say, I know, so I’ll provide you with evidence. I happen to be in a class of 43 medical doctors in training, a really small class compared to the numbers in public schools, and in that class, I have been told that I am an introvert, an extrovert, talkative, quiet, weak, strong and so on and so forth the contradiction goes, a particular trait will be termed aggressive by some, passionate by others. This is not because I am popular, on the contrary, I belong to the more distant few, however, there’s a tendency to be more visible when there are smaller numbers, hence people size you up based on an impression and make a snap judgment, this is not bad, we all do it. Because I have never really been able to get a label to completely define who I am, I came up with this theory.
Inside me are three guys (ose, multiple personality disorder); the giver, the receiver and the adjuster. The giver finds gratification in giving to others, she’s an ass kisser if there was ever a one, she’d prefer to inconvenience herself at the expense of others, but there’s more to her than that, it actually makes her happy to do these things and not being able to them usually weighs her down. The downside to her is she’s so careless that she gives so much of herself until she’s all emptied out and has to wait for the receiver to fill her back.
The receiver is a glutton, she doesn’t mind taking and taking and taking, she can actually be quite shameless about it and even gets mad when she’s not getting. She’s also blind, she doesn’t know what to reject, so she’ll soak up everything around her both positive and negative, she’ll take another’s depression as well as happiness and make it her own.
Then there is the adjuster, he’s cool headed and quite sophisticated, more like a fatherly figure, he has to be that way though, those spoilt children need looking after. He’s the one who has to tell the giver when to stop wasting herself on a lost cause, he’s the one who has to tell the receiver the difference between healthy emotions and harmful ones.
It doesn’t really matter whether I’m outgoing or reserved, I need the adjuster to guard my heart with all diligence, because it is my decision making room, if my adjuster is not matured, my emotions will just rise and fall like the tides, I’ll be given to unnecessary anger, I’ll make rash decisions based on a temporary feeling and end up regretting it. I will live my life based a template of how others make me feel, I will see myself as people see me and in the end I will loose myself, regardless of how much of a choleric I am.
At the heart of it, everyone is the same, we all have the same baseline, what separate us is how much we can build on that template. Know who you are, be who you are and learn to protect the core of who you are, regardless of the personality you’ve been assigned.
Akinro Oluwatosin Gloria.
