I was once stuck on an elevator with two very different people. We were there for hours and needed conversation but nobody knew what to say.
Charles was a wealthy, healthy, executive from New York, and Ernie a chubby trucker from the sticks. We tried cars, but Charles had a Bentley and Ernie a pickup. We tried music, but Charles liked Beethoven’s fourth symphony and Ernie said Willie Nelson. We tried women, but Charles enjoyed $1,000 a night escorts while Ernie liked to roll around in mud. After getting nowhere, I finally asked about what we had in common. “What do you guys think of beauty?” and, “Who do you find to be interesting?” Once we tapped into the right stuff we talked for hours (and even went for coffee after being rescued). Just goes to show, people aren’t that different.
Human condition
Do you know the expression, do bears s#!% in the woods? That’s the bear’s condition. We humans have our own and it includes body, personality, and soul. Everyone knows about the first two but few of us understand soul. What is it? And why is its reference always so spooky? Your soul is every non-body part you own that isn’t personality.
Our personalities say if we’re highly creative or social, and dictate how we act out in nature. Souls then hold the results. The soul’s job to observe, experience, and absorb—it’s your reflective self. Open your eyes and gaze into a photo. That feeling doesn’t go into personality, it enters the soul. So even if you’re an atheist, you have one.
Souls hold calculations, impressions, and knowledge. Everything that helps generate opinion. Feelings, thoughts, personal pleasures, and pain—this isn’t personality. Like bodies, personalities are just a way for getting around and they’re a dime a dozen. It’s souls that are interesting. That’s why the board game Funny You Should Ask flopped. It spent too much time on, which is your favourite colour of jellybean (body)? And how much do you like camping (personality)? None of which queried the soul.
Packing slips
We enter this world with an item list, like a packing slip coming from a warehouse. Some of us are tall, others are pudgy. Then we accumulate from there. On the slip is personality, loaded with instincts, desires, and quirky traits. All of which affect our actions living an eventful life. Souls are the baskets that pick up the fruit.
In the large scheme of things, personalities aren’t that important. Like bodies, you play the cards you’re dealt. But personalities are worth understanding because they’re part of the trip. “I’m like this.” “Sally is like that.”
Here are five personality types psychologists use to describe us:
- Openness – open to anything and creative, or reserved and conservative
- Conscientiousness – hardworking and organized, or lazy and a mess
- Extraversion – outgoing or an introvert
- Agreeableness – easy to get along with or pugnacious
- Neuroticism – the amount of anxiety you have
And we have many more like patience, honesty, humility, and pride. There are plenty of characteristics. Add in passion from the animal side and the need for social survival (status), and you see it’s too much. This package needed to be split up. So that’s what psychologists did.
Summary
Many problems with communication lie in definitions. When Plato identified the soul, he didn’t know people like Freud would come along to confuse things. And that’s the problem with social sciences—too many words. There was never any need to forget spirituality while breaking down personality further. Pieces like intuition, emotion, and reason could have added to what was already said. We didn’t need to start from scratch.
In the end, it’s easy to get wrapped up in everyday life and external definitions of who I am. But don’t forget there’s another something deep inside making observations and absorbing. For believers, no one said personalities go to heaven, it’s only the soul. And for atheists, you just don’t believe they move on. Either way, when stuck in an elevator, it makes for good conversation.