Personality.
What is Personality? According to Wikipedia, “It is the particular combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response patterns of an individual.” The word pattern itself in the description, describes personality as something that may be predicted.
I’ve always been fascinated about the idea of “self-discovery,” because it’s like an untapped goldmine waiting to be found; even back then, things that are about personality and even autograph books were my sort of thing, I like describing what I like, my likes and dislikes, my favorite color, and all that jazz. The idea of sharing those information is quite gratifying and what more is that as you go along you get to find yourself even deeper amidst the ideas that you share, like insights pop out of nowhere seeming that it was done by some unknown divine force.
Personality fascinates me the most; I have this great need to just analyze the behaviors of others and see the meaning behind their behavior. That need is what pushed me to pursue Psychology and I must say, I’m enjoying every bit of my education, though some days are boring, but I motivate myself from day to day if needed (hey, motivation is like bathing, we should do it everyday).
Journey of Self-Discovery
I’ve come to different fields of interests ranging from poetry, music, sports, and dancing but I realized, all those were just a means to an end, that end was my journey of self-discovery. In every field that I pursue, I’ve always wanted my own classification like if I’m in music, what type of musician am I? What’s my genre? What instrument do I play? Same goes with poetry, what type of poetic style should I be using (I used free verse and villanelle); then I got into dancing and I was so eager to have my own distinction from other dancers and so I chose Popping as my specialty. For every field that I’ve pursued, I wanted to have my own niche and distinction.
Self-discovery, the idea of knowing more about yourself, i.e., the strengths, weaknesses, quirks, habits, and the like are what I found to be the most enjoyable. Some field may be in the exploration of our universe, some explores the vastness of our ocean’s deep, and what I found to be the best to explore is the mind and the personality that goes with it.
Personalities are Puzzles
Everyone is unique and yet they are all the same. What I see are not mere personalities on people, but puzzles that can somehow be solved to some extent. Our personality manifests throughout our whole being, from our preferences on things, the way we choose to dress ourselves, our way of laughing, how we sneeze, our belongings, and even the spaces we live in speak a lot of our personality. All things that surrounds us which are under our control and subjected by our preferences are a reflection of who we are inside.
I perceive personality as a jigsaw puzzle, that new pieces are being shown the more you interact with a person. And you can only do so if you’d be well enough to share your own, it’s a transaction that both parties are benefitting. The degrees of knowing would depend on the training of the person, if one would train his faculties to discern the underlying patterns based on principles, one can put great amount of certainty and accuracy on their profile, compared to someone who’s not trained.
I’m still dubious of why people can’t invest time on discovering themselves; the earlier they put effort into it, the smoother their lives will be and they would know their limits and to how long can they stretch their boiling point. A lot of benefits can be earned by pursuing this matter, even if you’re not in the field of Psychology, you can still learn more about yourself through your own way.
That’s why people have problems coming out of the blue, not knowing the root of the problem must be one of the hardest things to come by, a problem can be provided by a solution once it’s recognized, but a problem that you don’t know what’s causing it is such a pain. Little you know, it might be you who’s the source of it, which you usually bring up but not aware because it happens unconsciously. I think you’ve encountered of this line before, “I need to find myself first,” which arises from the lack of knowledge of one’s self.
People look on different places, only to find in the end, that the answer lies within themselves all along. Have that interest for self-discovery and make yourself your own puzzle, be ever hungry for it as the nature of your curiosity dictates.
There’s this saying, “The unexamined life, is not worth living.” if that should ever be the measure of wealth, those who have invested in knowing themselves with greater depth must be utterly rich!
