Choose your compulsion

The Enneagram typology system is based on a primary compulsion each type of person has. Fives, like me, are driven to understand. Three, to perform and achieve. Nines, to make peace. Fours, to be special and tragic.

Most of my friends are Twos, driven to care for others (whether they want it or not!), with a wing type of One, the moralist who wants to be good, and wants others to be good, too.  By exception, B --remember him?-- is a Seven, whose compulsion is to have a good time.

If I had to choose a number for myself, I'd be a Seven or a maybe a Three. What I'd never choose is a One. Exhausting. And boring.

One of my friends who is a Two/One --big doses of both-- is in angry One mode because someone he cares about it being hard done by by someone unworthy and he can't fix it. We fell into a discussion of religion and he allowed as how he was a big fan of Jesus, but not of His Father. (We've been over this many times before.) He said he'd try to live like Jesus even if there was no God, or Jesus never rose from the dead or even existed.

To this Five, that makes absolutely no sense whatever. But since he was distressed, I thought I'd calm him by referencing one of the Founding Fathers, who edited the Gospels into a non-miraculous ethical tome called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. So I said, "Well, I guess that makes you a Thomas Jefferson kind of Christian." Undeterred in his roll of righteous wrath, he answered, "No. I would never own slaves."

At that point I went to the bathroom.

Sevens are elusive and tricky, but they're a lot more fun.