Dear Myers and your Pal Briggs,
I have recently overcome the complicating hurdle of an identity crisis. An almost-quarter-life crisis I’ve been calling it. I blame it on my self-analytical tendencies, my generation’s “be who you want to be” mantra, but mostly I blame you, Myers and Briggs. You pesky little ladies have insistently drawn lines and built barriers confining all persons to only 16 different personality types!
Let me the first to admit: I am obsessed with your work, Myers-Briggs, and your eerily accurate descriptions and interpretations of human behavior and personality quirks. I love how you astute ladies have described and defined personalities and have thus helped me understand my friends and family better. You’ve profoundly picked out our tendencies, our flaws and our fortes. You have helped me resolve my schemas and think, “that’s why so-and-so can’t keep their room cleaned” or “wow, I didn’t realize that alone-time could actually be preferable.” But despite these insights and ah-ha’s, Meyers and Briggs, you have inevitably caused me to stubbornly defy any explanation of my unique self. I, of course, am far too mysterious, complicated, and matchless to be put inside box!
Well, apparently not.
You’ve described ESFP’s as having an “exuberant love for materials” who get “overwhelmed with negative thoughts and possibilities.” They hate structure and routine and would love nothing more than for life to be a continual party. They’re given the title “The Performer.” Characters such as Fred and George Weasley have been pegged as this type and, of course, the Bible’s best-known partier, the infamous Prodigal Son. Not only does this list of a mix of vivacious and overly precarious adjectives perfectly describe my personality and general outlook on life, it also tells me that I have been, unwillingly, boxed in. I have been wrapped up and called out. You have not only described me, Myers-Briggs but have described my hate for describing. Sheesh.
But let me tell you something, Meyers-Briggs, you’ve forgotten one very important factor. One tiny little detail that happens to change everything. My love for life and thirst for beauty and pleasure may cause me to live a little recklessly and have the inability to do things that I don’t find fun and purposeful, but my flesh and my worldly passions and desires are not my fate. I am not inevitably doomed for a life of non-committed relationships and an exuberant need for aesthetics and luxury. Because I am being transformed in the likeness of my Maker--the Maker and Creator of every trait and tendency. And guess what Myers-Briggs, he’s an Extroverted Introvert with Sensing iNtuition, a Feeling Thinker, and a Perceptive Judger and I am not bound by my personality because I am becoming more like him.
My personality, therefore, is neither a strength nor a weakness. It is not an excuse to sin and it is not a reason for success. It is a reflection of a big God, a whole God, a God that had to create more than 7 billion different and distinct personalities to even begin to show us His own person, His own character. He uses every trait and tendency to show off himself. He refines the sin and brings forth the good, the reflections of himself, and makes them glow.
In overcoming this identity crisis, I’ve realized that there are things described in my personality that I love. There are things listed on my “personality profile” that allow me to better understand myself and why I do things the way I do. Because Jesus doesn’t make mistakes and he is making me new. He doesn’t stuff my personality in the trash and he doesn’t want to turn me into some kind of robot or, even worse, a Pharisee, but by refining flesh into beauty and quirks into gifts.
So I want to say thank you, Myers and Briggs. Thank you for helping me see that it takes every kind of person to reflect the image of our Father. Our Father who loves me for exactly who I am. And really, that’s all that matters in the end. My identity is in him and who he says I am. And he says I am His. His quirky, lover of beauty, ESFP daughter.
Yours very truly,
Karly
