Positive psychology

You Value What You See

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Personality, Personality, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness

I don’t see much. Well, that’s not entirely true, but there’s lots of truth in it. An important part of this “not seeing much” is related to the fact that I am colorblind. Not seriously so, like people who actually don’t see colors at all and live in a kind of black-and-white world, as I have a red/green colorblindness, which is the most common. So when Deb asks me to look at the (red) tulips in the yard, I can see them only if they are pretty close to me, but when far away, I can’t distinguish the red tulips from the green foliage. There are lots of other times when I mix colors or fail to distinguish colors. I have failed to distinguish red, green, brown, and gray depending on the depth of the color and what might be the background confusing the “cones” in my eyes. I recall the first time everyone realized that I was colorblind because my paternal grandfather asked me to plug the meter in his green Nash standing right in front of his office building where he could watch me from 6 stories up. Mom and he watched as I plugged the meter of the brown Nash right next to his green one. Colorblindness comes through the mother’s side of the family and rarely affects girls, so my maternal uncle was colorblind, my daughter not, but her son is. It is funny to play Sorry with Gavin when we struggle to distinguish the green movers from the red ones. Enough about the colorblindness, already. What does this have to do with anything important in life? It’s not terribly important if you or I are colorblind, but it is dreadfully important to know what we see and what we don’t see because we actually see different things.

First, let’s enlarge upon the word see for a moment. We can use this word “see” to include at least all five senses and possibly the “sixth sense” of intuition. Intuition is very close to the feelings that I have disused at length in previous blogs, but for our current purposes, we shall use the word intuition as a kind of sixth sense. Then we can use the word “see” to include all the ways people gather information: seeing (physically), hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, and by intuition. I mention this 6-part way of “seeing” as a way of dealing with several important factors in one’s psychological makeup, not the least of which is that there are great differences among people in the way they see things. Some people are particularly good at seeing through one of their six senses, and some people are good at using all of their senses. Furthermore, there are people called synesthetic, who actually integrate their senses so much that they do such things as “taste the color blue,” smell the green grass, feel “touched” the thing that they hear, and many other combinations. There is at least one good book on the phenomenon of synesthesia and many articles, some of them in the popular genre. Blind people often have developed a particularly sense of hearing, and deaf people are often particularly good at seeing with their eyes. Beyond the fact that many people have a preference for one or two senses, there are people who aren’t particularly good at using any of their senses.

Beyond the use of the physical five senses plus intuition, there are some very interesting things about what we see that are very close to many other psychological factors, not the least of which is what we value. Think of it this way: if you don’t really care much about colors, as is largely true for me, you won’t really see colors, or if you do, you won’t care much about colors. Thankfully, Deb chooses my ties every day and often chooses my suits, jackets, pants, and shirts. I care about how I look but I don’t care about colors particularly as Deb has learned over our 40 some years together.

Having briefly presented some information about what we see with our eyes, what we see with the other physical senses, what we see with intuition, and also what we value, allow me to tell you a bit about a very important understanding that was made a century ago. Carl Jung, psychoanalyst and psychologist was a student of Sigmund Freud around the turn of the last century but came to believe that Freud’s understanding of the human condition was not sufficient to help people grapple with the difficulties in their lives. He proposed. Among many other things, that people had substantially different personality structures, one of which was the way that people see things. He referred to this structure as the perceptive function. Jung observed that people seemed to attend to very different things, perhaps see different things, and certainly value different things. Simply stated, Jung suggested that there is a spectrum of these differences representing how, what, and why people saw, attended to, and valued different things. He called these two different ways of seeing “intuitive” and “sensing,” terms that have continued to be used for the past century. I have found it more valuable to use the terms “objective” and “subjective” in explaining these differences of seeing. Thus the spectrum of perception is:

_______________________________________/______________________________________

Objective (Sensing)                                                                                     Subjective (intuition)

 

There have been scores of books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of pages written on Jung’s understanding of personality, so permit me to simply indicate how people with these different perspectives see the world.

Objective (sensing) people tend to:

  • See what is real
  • See what is factual
  • Value the physical world
  • Engage the physical world
  • Produce something
  • Examine things (and people) individually

Subjective (intuitive) people tend to:

  • See what is unreal
  • See what is possible
  • Regard the nonphysical world
  • Engage the nonphysical world
  • Create something
  • Examine things (and people) relationally

There are many more things that can be said of these important ways of looking at the world, and nay interested reader will have no difficulty finding relevant material on this subject. My point in presenting this difference in seeing is to highlight the strengths of both of these ways of seeing, and to shed some light on some of the difficulties people have engaging these different worlds (physical and nonphysical), as well as the difficulties people have relating to one another.

For purposes of personal revelation I should note that I am particularly on the objective side of this spectrum, namely being a person who sees the real world and engages the real world. However, I am married to someone who sees the unreal world and engages quite well with this world. Furthermore, I have had the opportunity of living with my 14-year old grandson for the past three months who is distinctly on the subjective side of the spectrum of perception. The interesting thing about living with these two people who share this subjective way of seeing the world is in their seminaries in how and what they see and ultimately what they value. Additionally, as would be expected, they display differences in maturity that come with being either 14 or 65. Deb grew up in a very objective family and learned how to deal with the objective elements of the world, so from her earliest years she knew how to engage the physical world, reflected to some degree in the way she cared for property. My grandson did not grow up in such an environment largely because his mother took undue care for all the property in her household leaving my grandson to be able to continue undisturbed in engaging the “unreal” world, more accurately described as the “possible world”. It has been remarkable for me to see Gavin who is truly “subjective” in what he sees compared to my wife who also sees the subjective but also engages the objective world. This has given me an opportunity of seeing a bit clearer what subjective people “see” and hence what they do with what they see, and what they value because of what they see. This can be simply summarized in the matter of socks.

Socks? Yes. Some weeks ago, before I had truly grasped the differences in how my grandson and I “see” the world, I noticed that he had left his socks on the bathroom floor when we were visiting our cabin up north. I noticed the socks after he showered for the day. I noticed them at noon, again at 5 PM, and at 8. I noticed the socks because I notice such things. At 8 o’clock I asked Gavin to look in the bathroom and see what might be “wrong,” which was an interesting word I chose for what he saw. He immediately said that he saw the socks on the floor. I then asked him if he had seen the socks on the floor during the several times he had gone into the bathroom during the day. He said that he hadn’t seen the socks. While hard for me to believe, I came to the immediate realization that he hadn’t actually seen the socks. I thought, “How can someone walk into a (relatively small) bathroom and not see the socks that are on the floor?” But this wasn’t so much a question as it was a rhetorical question, something that I restrained myself from asking because such questions only stir shame rather than instruct.

Since the incident with the socks there have been perhaps several hundred such incidents over these past 12 weeks that Gavin has been with us, many of which I ignored, many of which I attended to by picking things up, and many of which I asked Gavin to attend to. This experience of “socks” and all that the socks represent has stirred a new understanding of people who have the subjective way of looking at the world.

I know this: it is the subjective people of the world who have made the most important discovering and improvements in the world, not the objective people like me. This very blog is a testament to this fact: nothing that I have written is “new” because Jung and his predecessors “discovered” this difference in perception long ago. Theologian Soren Kierkegaard predated Jung by nearly a hundred years and said the following about how people perceive. He called objective folks “people of possibility” and subjective folks “people of reality.” Then he went on to note the difficulties that both kinds of people have:

  • People of reality do everything but nothing (or very little) is of value
  • People of possibility do nothing (or very little), and everything they dream about is valuable

There are many more musings on this matter, not the least of which is what we value. Thus, Gavin values what he might do rather than what he does, whereas I value what I have done more than what I might do. I’m sure it’s been a challenge for Gavin to live with me for these past months and it certainly has been a challenge to live with him. More importantly, this is not about Gavin and me. It is about what we see and what we value, and ultimately how we can understand and value one another.

Further Reading

Jung, C. (1921/1974). Psychological types. Princeton, NJ: Bollingen

Myers. I.B. (1980). Gifts differing. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press

Johnson, R. (1993). Watch your temperament. Madison, WI: Midlands Psychological Press

Feelings, Emotions, and Temperaments

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, Personality, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness

I remind our readers that we have written several blogs on “feelings,” noting that feelings erupt in four consecutive stages: first physical, secondly emotional, thirdly cognitive, and finally in some kind of action (which could be something said or done). Significant in the understanding of feelings is that feelings are undefined. Thus “feelings” belongs with the undefined elements of basic physics, the undefined concept of life in biology, and the undefined concept of love in human interaction with the world. These central ingredients of the existence are so important that they need to be undefined. While time, life, and love and other such basic ingredients of the universe cannot be defined, they can be observed, they can be experienced, and they can be expressed. You have a sense of such things as time and life. Most important for our discussion, you have a sense of feelings. I will remind us that emotions are a subset of feelings, feelings being the first reflections of my core self. Now here I go again using an undefined phrase, core self, without so much as a by-your-leave. I will need to rely on previous blogs, and more substantial writings of other authors to make a case for “core self.”

So here is the paradigm: I have a core self, which we must admit is a spiritual phenomenon (oops, another undefined word: spiritual. Just have to observe it, experience it, and speak it…but that is another blog). So this spiritual entity of my so-called core self generates feelings. The stimuli for feelings can be an internal experience or an external experience, but when feelings erupt, they are an emanation of one’s core self. Then these feelings are expressed in physical, emotional, cognitive, and active (or spoken) forms. We have previously noted that people are inclined to the experience of one of these four elements of feelings and likewise inclined to the expression of one of these elements. So, for instance, I am a person who experiences feelings first emotionally and then I am inclined to express feelings in action or words. Deb is inclined to first experience feelings physically and then express them cognitively. Consider how these differences have made for a challenging opportunity to understand each other over our 42 years together. You might consider how you experience and express your feelings. But for now, I want to focus on the experience and expression of emotion, that second of the four elements of feelings. There are four basic emotions.

The Four Basic Emotions

In previous blogs we have noted that there are four basic emotions: fear, joy, anger, and sadness. These four emotions are constellated in two different forms: defense-based emotions and “love-based” emotions. Thus:

  • The love-based emotions are:
    • Joy when I have something that I love
    • Sadness when I lose something that I love
  • The defense-based emotions are:
    • Fear when I imagine that I might lose something
    • Anger when I have lost something

An important note is that joy always precedes sadness and fear always precedes anger. I have to experience the joy of having something before I have the experience of sadness upon losing it. When I feel the need to defend myself, I always feel fear first because of the impending threat, and then I feel anger secondly as a means of defense against my attacker.

It is also important note about the “something” that I love, have, and lose is that it could be anything. For instance, I may love a person, a group of people, a political persuasion, a physical object, a geographical place, an idea, a hope, a dream, or many other things, some physical, some imaginary, some personal, some interpersonal. The key factor in this is that all the four basic emotions have something to do with love in some way even though we refer to joy and sadness as love-based emotions. So when I get afraid of losing something, I fear losing something I love, and when I get angry at having lost something, I have lost something that I love. Our proposal, then, is that all emotions are in some way about loving something. Let’s move on to how these emotions are related to temperament. There are four temperaments.

The Four Temperaments

I suggest readers review our previous blogs on the four temperaments. I will not belabor the differences among these temperaments but to suggest some things common to each of them. Furthermore, there are many other systems of understanding personality, among them personality type (Jung, and Myers-Briggs), Enneagram (many authors), the DISC assessment (primarily in business). The StrengthsFinder (also in business primarily), and several other “temperament” systems. All of these systems are of value, but for our purposes here, we understand the four basic temperaments to be:

  • Player, someone who seeks experience, and often excitement
  • Lover, someone who seeks connections, often seeking harmony
  • Caretaker, someone who takes care of property
  • Analyst, someone who seeks truth, usually through finding and solving problems

We will not belabor further explanation of these temperaments except to say: (1) no one fits entirely in one temperament, (2) everybody has some elements of all four temperaments, and (3) people need to develop the characteristics of the other temperaments to be mature, successful, and happy in life. Most don’t. Now on to the emotion part of this blog.

Emotion and Temperament

Everybody experiences all four emotions regularly, certainly every day, and very often more frequently than daily. And everybody experiences joy first and sadness second as they have something before they lose that something. Additionally, everybody experiences fear first and anger second. That having been said, we propose that people of different temperaments tend to express these emotions differently. Each temperament has a tendency to express one of the love-based emotions and experience one of the defense-based emotions. Thus:

  • Players express the love-based emotion of joy most readily and experience the defense-based emotion of fear when feeling in some kind of danger
  • Lovers express the love-based feeling of sadness most readily and experience the defense-based emotion of fear when feeling some kind of danger
  • Caretakers express the love-based emotion of joy most readily and experience the defense-based emotion of anger when feeling some kind of danger
  • Analysts express the love-based emotion of sadness most readily, and experience the defense-based emotion of anger when feeling some kind of danger

It is important to note that we look at sadness as a love-based emotion, not depression, not despair, and not something bad. Thus, lovers and analysts are not more often sad, and certainly not more depressed than players and caretakers. They are simply freer to express sadness when they feel it. Lovers express sadness frequently because they are acutely aware of the loss of connection with people that happens frequently every day. Analysts express sadness frequently because they are always seeing how the world is not functioning as well as it could be. Players and caretakers appear to be happier than lovers and analysts, but they are, in fact, no happier: they just focus on being happy and seek to ingratiate the feeling of joy. They have just as much sadness as lovers and analysts; they just don’t show it.

People tend to express different defense-based emotions according to their temperament. Thus, we see more expressed anger with analysts and caretakers than we see with players and lovers. Caretakers and analyst are not angrier by nature; they just tend to express anger more readily. On the other hand, players and lovers express fear more readily. So while fear is actually the first defense-based emotion when we feel some threat, players and lovers tend to express this emotion, while caretakers and analysts tend to quickly pass over the fear part of defense and move right into the anger part of defense.

A way of understanding this phenomenon of experience and expression of emotions according to temperament is to consider that all people tend to be consciously aware of one emotion while another emotion lies in one’s unconscious. Thus, a person who expresses joy rather more readily than sadness is consciously aware of the emotion of joy but not always conscious of the emotion of sadness that always accompanies the joy of having something. In this paradigm of temperament vis-à-vis emotion, caretakers and players are more aware of the joy of having something but not conscious of the possibility of losing what they have. In contrast, lovers and analysts are much more aware of the possibility of losing what they love, and hence less aware of the actual joy of having something that they love. We could suggest that lovers and analysts are more aware of the potential of losing something that they love while caretakers and players are more aware of the joy of having something that they love. This paradigm might suggest that caretakers and players are happier than their counterparts, but such is not the case. They are just better at enjoying the moment of loving something. Analysts and analysts are not sadder than their counterparts; rather, they are more aware that having something always means losing it eventually. Both the joy of having and the sadness of losing are love-based and valuable in life. But one’s awareness and expression of emotion can lead to difficulties in life:

Challenges Related to Emotion and Temperament

Consider how you express your love positively, whether with joy or sorrow. Then consider which of the two defense-based emotions you actually experience most frequently. You might then be a:

  • A player who loves life, enjoys people, places, and things very easily, but have a tendency towards an underlying fear, which could then turn to anxiety
  • A lover who loves people and the connections with people, but also have a tendency to an underlying fear, which could then turn to anxiety
  • A caretaker who loves things and the care of things, but when feeling some kind of danger to these things, can fall into anger
  • An analyst who loves ideas, truth, and problem-solving, but can fall into anger when things don’t go right.

This analysis of temperament vis-à-vis emotions might seem convoluted, so allow me to make the matter of emotions and temperament even murkier. When someone is expressing his or her basic love-based emotions, there is always the other side of the spectrum operating at an unconscious level. Likewise, when someone is experiencing a defense-based emotion, there is always the other defense-based emotion lurking in the background. So, what we have then is:

  • The player easily expresses fear on the surface when feeling a need to defend, but unconsciously, s/he feels anger. Because her/his anger is not mature, players can become enraged and out of control occasionally.
  • The lover also expresses fear on the surface when in defensive posture, but unconsciously feels anger. Thus, s/he isn’t particularly good at managing anger, which can come out with explosions.
  • The caretaker who displays anger on the surface when defending, but unconsciously feels fear. Thus, a caretaker can become quite overcome with fear, which then turns to anxiety.
  • The analyst who is good at expressing anger unconsciously feels fear when in a defensive position. Thus, this person may be overcome with fear that there is no way to fix what is wrong with the world. In other words, the analyst can’t make the world as good as he or she would like it to be.

The potential expression of unconscious emotions is most problematic for all people regardless of temperament. It is not so much the emotion that we are good at that causes us difficulty in life but the emotion that we are not aware of and hence not good at expressing. We can improve our expression of emotion by being aware of both of the defense-based emotions so that anger and fear do not operate unconsciously, immaturely, and out of control

Possibilities Related to Temperament and Emotion

While it is important to become increasing aware of our defense-based emotions, particularly the one that tends to be unconscious, it is even more important to become increasingly aware of our love-based emotions so we can enhance our lives. People can be at their very best if they become increasingly aware of their emotions, particularly the emotions that are largely unconscious. We suggest:

  • Players mature emotionally as they become conscious of the potential sadness that is implicit in every moment of joy associated with having something rather than singularly insisting that every moment of life must be exciting
  • Lovers mature emotionally as they become conscious of the potential of simply enjoying the connections that they have rather than worrying about the inevitability of losing a connection.
  • Caretakers mature emotionally as they become conscious of the potential sadness associated with loss or damage of property rather than singularly focusing on protecting everything from damage or loss
  • Analysts mature emotionally as they become conscious of the immense joy associated with understanding things and allowing themselves to simply enjoy it rather than focusing on the potential problem with something

Summary

  • We all feel deeply, feelings that erupt from our central core and are experienced first physically followed by feeling emotionally, cognitively, and in action
  • We all experience all four emotions associated with the second experience of feeling
  • We tend to be more aware of and expressive of one of the two defense-based emotions and one of the two love-based emotions
  • The more aware we become of the emotions that are unconscious, the less these emotions will dominate us because of their immaturity.
  • If we focus first on our strengths of temperament and associated emotion, we will be able to augment these strengths, have a better appreciation for all four emotions, and thus not be controlled by emotions but find ways to effectively express these emotions

Temperament IX: Opportunities and Challenges for Caretakers

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Personality, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness

This is the last of nine blogs on “temperament,” the general approach that people take in life. We have previously discussed four “temperaments” as I have conceived of them for several decades beginning when I began to use the term “players” for people who seemed naturally inclined to excitement, adventure, play, and most of all, experience. You might find it valuable to review the blogs on the four temperaments that I discuss including players (seeking experience most of all), lovers (seeking connection), analysts (seeking meaning), and caretakers (seeking the care of property). I have discussed the basic natures of each of these four temperaments noting how they see the world, how they evaluate the world, how they communicate to the world, and how they engage the world. Following these initial explorations of the basic natures, I then proceeded with the opportunities and challenges that each temperament has. I now come to the last of these discussions of opportunities and challenges, that of people I call “caretakers.”

Review of caretakers

As I conceive of these four temperaments (caretakers, lovers, players, and analysts), I see people who roughly (or thoroughly) fall into one of these categories love something. Lovers love (human) connection, players love experience, analysts love meaning, and caretakers love property. You may recall that I see myself primarily as a caretaker. I was bemused a few months ago when Deb and I were giving a lecture about our recently published book, I asked if anyone in the audience (of about 100) “loved property more than people.” There were no raised hands. I was bemused by this, but certainly understood the reticence of people admitting that they just might love property more than people. Then I noted that I was such a person, and then saw people look at me aghast as if I had just spoken some kind of psychological heresy. We didn’t have time to unpack my statement about “loving property,” but it is indeed true that people with my orientation towards the caretaker temperament have a deep value of property, primarily human-made property.

This orientation towards property leads us into the current discussion of “opportunities and challenges” that we caretakers have in the world. So, consider in your own mind first, whether you might be such a person. You might find it a bit embarrassing to see, much less admit, that you really love property. If you are distinctly not a caretaker by nature, you might consider that you are related in some way to such a person, perhaps a parent or a spouse. If that is the case, you might now note how you feel towards that person. You might discover that you think something is wrong with him/her. I have found that people tend to revere my caretaking orientation and abilities, on the one hand, and find my orientation to property boring at the least, and perhaps appalling at the most.

So, let’s first look at the opportunities of caretakers.

A note of history

The opportunities for caretakers abound, at least in this country (U.S.), a country that was essentially founded on property and work that protected and improved upon the property. If we look at American history, both the good and the bad, we can see that both the successes and failures of America have largely been related to property. This view then gives us a picture of the opportunities and challenges that caretakers have in America, and to a lesser degree, other countries. Consider what you see and hear when you go through a day. I purport that you see things. I might even suggest that when you see people, you see people having things, looking at things, caring for things, or doing things. I believe this things orientation that is so American is not so predominant in other countries except, perhaps where American property orientation has been imported. Consider, for instance, how the Native Americans originally viewed property, particularly land. They did not “own” land. They may have occupied it for a season or two, but the land belonged to the Spirit, or perhaps to the People at large. (Most Native Americans had names for their tribes what could be translated into “The People” rather than to the names that Northern Europeans came to call them.) But from the very beginning of the Northern European invasion of what came to be called the United States had a distinct orientation towards the acquisition, protection of, and enhancement of property. There were elements of the philosophical types who we might call analysts, certainly the player types who might have been the Lewis and Cark’s and the Daniel Boone’s of America exploring the West, and people of a lover temperament among them, but the predominant feature of the country from its very beginning and continuing into the present has had to do with property. Property first. Everything else second: that would include loving people, loving ideas, and loving experience. This leads us to the next discussion:

The opportunities for caretakers

They abound. The opportunities abound in America. Note the thousands of “startups” that are much the rage. Note the independent workers much the rage. Note the “work from home” way of work is that is more and more common. Note the opportunities for making money (which is essentially property) that is all the rage. Then note that there seems to be no end of this rage that is so intrinsic to property acquisition and management, but we will delay this discussion until we face the challenges that caretakers have. My point here is that America (by which I mean predominantly the U.S.) gives us caretakers a wide berth in going about life because America is so property-based. I have found that I “fit in” with just about any group and any ensuing conversation because talk almost always goes to what one has or what one has done. Having and Doing are the central ingredients of the caretaker temperament. Let’s look at some of what is the fabric of American society:

  • Academic: What is the basic orientation towards most of elementary school through high school? Achievement, grades, and finishing a degree. I aver that most of such school is very production oriented, or doing-based. This made school quite easy for me, especially in elementary and high school, most of college and most of graduate school. I knew, for instance, that I needed to be “Dr. Johnson” so I raced through my doctorate in two years. Didn’t learn much, but I finished. Compare that achievement, if we even call it such, with Deb, the analyst, who took 10 years to do the same even though she is the smarter of the two of us. Deb was interested in learning. I was interested in doing. Pity the poor analyst kids (I see many in my office) who are looking for meaning, much less the players looking for experience.
  • Vocational: Work is about “doing”, right? Not necessarily. What work does a math researcher do when s/he is trying to find the answer to a complex math problem? S/he is not “doing” anything, really. I was bemused many years ago when I discovered that the math “research lab” on the top floor of the math building was just a lounge with blackboards (remember those?) on every wall. Aside from these math types and many other researchers, philosophers, and the like, most of us think of work being equal to production, care, or enhancement of property. Pity the poor guy who cares about people, ideas, and experience if he is in a doing job. I recall a gentleman a saw recently who was a player by nature but struggling to get his accounting degree because he “could make a lot of money as an accountant.” I know of a current patient who makes nearly six figures doing a job he “hates” but can’t seem to give up his current income to change careers to do something that he dreams of doing and might be might be quite good at. Vocation is much easier for caretakers like me because we can do most anything.
  • Family. When I ask people what is important to them, I always have in mind the four elements of the four temperaments: property (caretakers), connections (lovers), experience (players), and meaning (analysts). But when I ask people what is important to them, I almost always hear “family” regardless of what their temperament really is. The idea of “family” is so central in the current psychology of the country that it dominates what people think is really important. When people think of family, they almost immediately think of taking care of their families with property and money. They don’t think of experience, meaning, and connection so much as they think of stuff. When I think about “family,” I think of taking care of the property that I have, they have, or we have. I have been thinking much lately about how I can protect and preserve my property so that my surviving child and grandchildren might use this property when I die.
  • Fun. What is fun for people? When we think of “fun,” most of us think of doing Deb and I are finishing up a bit of vacation as we speak and we think we might do something today, like play miniature golf or go to a movie. Lovers might just think of snuggling on the couch or having an intimate conversation. Players might think of rock climbing or playing hockey. Analysts might just think.

So, in general, the opportunities for caretakers are many. Especially early in life. What about the challenges?

Challenges for caretakers

The most important thing to say about the challenges for caretakers is that the first part of life, and perhaps the first two-thirds of life, is pretty easy for the likes of caretakers because so much of America is designed for their doing things and caring for property. It is in the later stages of life that caretakers tend to get bogged down. They get bogged down with property and doing. Furthermore, people of other temperaments get bogged down with property, money, and the security that such things brings to people, like the guys I just mentioned making a lot of money or wanting to make a lot of money doing something that they don’t really like. Let me examine the tendencies that caretakers have when things get bogged down:

  • Too much property. Because caretakers take care of property and spend an inordinate amount of time acquiring property, they usually have much more than they need. Then they have to paint, insure, protect, and otherwise care for all this property. It can be a burden. I am working diligently to use, sell, or give away much of the property I have acquired over my years of life.
  • Aging. Now that I am 75 and fast approaching 76 I note that I simply can’t do what I used to do. This, of course, is true of all people, but for us caretakers it is a burden more than for most because we can’t do what we have always done: everything. I am now seeing a very caretaker-by-nature man of 50 something who had a tragic accident that left him unable to use his legs at all and much limitation with his hands. He is beside himself as to how to find a way to do something that is meaningful when meaning has always been working 12 hours a day and then some. You don’t have to be physically impaired to note that you can’t do what you used to do with aplomb.
  • Angry. This young (he is 50 something as I noted) man is quite angry. He is angry at life, at himself, his wife, and perhaps God for the predicament he is in because he can’t do what he has always done. But he is not the only angry caretaker I have known, sadly including me. It took me years to overcome the tendency to get angry when I couldn’t do something or someone else didn’t do something. Life was all about doing, and since I thought everyone should be like me, just do shit, I got angry when they didn’t do. I had a conversation with a like-minded concrete guy who is working on a project at our house. We both agreed that “the younger generation doesn’t know much about work,” which just might mean work=doing things.
  • Lost relationships. I know of many caretakers who were so good at doing things, that they couldn’t maintain a successful relationship, which ideally would include all the ingredients previously mentioned: connection, meaning, and experience. A woman who just works all the time, whether at home or at work may not notice that her spouse and children miss some of the other ingredients like connection, meaning, and experience. I hear from people that their spouses “just don’t have any time for me.”

Aside from these specific challenges caretakers face, the greater challenge is for them to develop beyond their basic nature. This doesn’t mean that they give up their love of property. It means that they give up their singular love of property and develop love of connection, meaning, and experience. Likely, a caretaker will have what we call a “secondary temperament,” which might be player, lover, or analyst, so developing other loves apart from property might start with one’s secondary temperament. It is much harder, however to develop the really undeveloped natures that are so rich in people of other temperaments. It is hard for a caretaker to take Buddha’s alleged statement, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.” As it a challenge for a person of any temperament to develop secondary and tertiary elements of his/her psychological nature, it is essential. The other three temperaments often suffer for the lack of doing and producing: analysts can end up having everything possible but nothing real; lovers can have love for everyone but not ever do anything, and players having all kinds of experiences but not accomplish anything of lasting value. Caretakers need to learn to love more than property.