Always Different, Always the Same
The superb science journalist Sharon Begley, who wrote a regular column for Mindful until her untimely death in early 2021, was fond of studies of personality: the different types, how much they’re influenced by our environment and our relationships, and—most potently—whether our personalities can change.
Even if we’re hard-pressed to say precisely what personalities are, we know them. Some people are laid back, others stubborn, some happy-go-lucky, others a little gloomy. Some folks we know are sharp-tongued while others talk smooth. Some are rugged individualists; others conform. Archetypes capturing these human variations abound. In Southeast Asia, since ancient times, shadow puppets have depicted stock characters dancing, laughing, fighting, fleeing. The troupes of stereotypes in the Italian commedia dell’arte allowed audiences to laugh at themselves and each other. In modern times, we’ve created the Enneagram, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the DISC Assessment, and countless other schemas to suss out and navigate the type of person we are.
Not only that, thinkers from Sun Tzu and Socrates to Maya Angelou and bell hooks have urged us to get to know who we are, the better to thrive in the world. If getting to know who we are is such an important goal in life, then, why are we so determined to change ourselves and to try to change others?
Indeed, can we actually change? And will practices like mindfulness change us? And further, will arguments and persuasion inspire other people to change for the better? Or should we just throw up our hands: People don’t change; let’s leave it at that.
When we consider whether change in shorter periods of time: habits and views, what we actually do and say, and whether it does harm. If an outgoing person irritates a lot of people in an office, trying to make them less outgoing is hardly the place to start. Why not go out there with them, get to know them better? At that point, levers for change might present themselves. The problem is not who they are; it’s what they’re doing or maybe something they’re not seeing or you’re not seeing..
