Spiritual

Love II: Temperamental Love

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, love, Personality, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Three quarters of a century ago C.S. Lewis wrote The Four Loves, a book that has been quite popular in Christian circles over many decades of the 20th century. Lewis suggested that there are four different kinds of love, three of them decidedly biblical and the fourth implicitly biblical. He suggested that there is empathy, friendship, romance, and godly love. Lewis identified the (biblical) Greek words for each of these (although eros, romance, is not strictly used in the Bible). Lewis suggested that we need all of these loves, and centered on godly love (the Greek word is agape), which we might consider to be sacrificial love.

More recently, Gary Chapman wrote The Five Love Languages that has been quite popular in the current century. Chapman suggests that these five “long languages” are words (of affection), (quality) time, physical (touch), (acts of) service, and (receiving) gifts. This understanding of love has been a valuable addition to the understanding of love.

I presently want to suggest yet another way of looking at different kinds of love, namely the kinds of love associated with what we call “temperament.” Deb and I are fast finishing our latest book, tentatively entitled, A Family of Temperaments that we briefly summarized in I Want to Tell You How I Feel. We suggest that among many other valuable ways of understanding differences of personality, we can roughly suggest that people fall into one of four temperaments: caretaker, lover, analyst, and player. Hence:

  • Caretakers take care of property and hence bring safety to the world.
  • Lovers seek connections with people and hence bring sacrifice to the world.
  • Analysts seek meaning and hence bring understanding to the world.
  • Players seek experience and hence bring joy to the world.

It is important to note that no two people are alike, that no one falls purely and completely into one of these four temperaments, most people have a combination of one primary temperament augmented by elements of another temperament, and that all people have at least some elements of all four temperaments. Now, let’s examine how people who have a particular temperament display love and want to be loved.

Basic characteristics of temperament-based love

Caretakers’ love

Caretakers’ orientation is towards property, namely the care of property, the protection of property, the effective use of property, and the improvement of property. As a result, they love property more than anything else. This is a hard thing to say, to hear, or to believe. And it is even harder to respect by people who do not have this kind of love.

Think of it this way: caretakers see the need to take care of the world, namely the physical world. C.S. Lewis suggested four biblical loved, but we might also look at Genesis, Chapter 1 where Adam and Eve were charged with “caring for the world,” perhaps as an act of love. This physical part of the world could be manmade or natural. Some caretakers are very interested in the environment and enjoy taking care of the environment. My neighbor, Luke, works directly in the field of environmental protection and enhancement, and it seems that he is at his very best when he is taking care of the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin. My other neighbor, Lonnie, is a tradesman by nature and takes care of manmade property. His work on the roof of our house, the roof of Deb’s greenhouse, the chimney of our house, and many windows of our house is just one way he has loved.  But what has he loved? He has loved the careful use of property. Interestingly, we might say that both Lonnie and Luke are loving humanity, but the way they love humanity is to take care of physical property, one with manmade property, the other with the property of nature.

Note that many people engage in this kind of love, namely the care and effective use of property. We have many other forms of this caretaking nature. I know of someone who really enjoys restoring old cars, another man who really enjoys laying flooring, another who enjoys laying cement, and yet another who really enjoys helping people develop their bodies. I think all of these people would not easily say that they love property more than people, but in a sense, this is true, and in the larger sense, when they are loving property, they are loving people in their own way.

Lovers’ love

Love is a great part of all religions and certainly part of Christianity. Many churchgoers and those who have attended church weddings have heard the Apostle Paul’s statement of love in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13: “love is patient and kind” among other things. Paul also says that love is a “gift,” in fact the “greatest of gifts” among many others.

Lovers seek connections with people. I sometimes suggest that lovers have an orientation that is “us first, you second, and I last.” This means that lovers are always looking for some kind of “connection” with people, which might be said to be spiritual, but also emotional and very often physical. Lovers are at their best when they can simply love someone. They also tend to be “animal people,” namely loving and caring for animals, but I think the deepest of lovers who love animals then to love dogs. Consider the love that you cold pour out on a dog compared to the cat who might want not much more than a lap-sit for a moment.

It is important to note that we normally think of love as something that is towards people, or perhaps that the love of people is the best kind of love, but I think not. Indeed, all forms of love ultimately involve people, but the actual direction of love is not necessarily people as it is with lovers. Lovers are the very best when it comes to personal sacrifice. They are the most forgiving of all temperaments. They are often the most generous. Their generosity and personal sacrifice ingratiate themselves to people, but their desire is not ingratiation but the very act of loving people in the ways they do it: connecting. The connection they bring to people can enhance others’ lives as well as being restorative and healing.

Analysts’ love

Analysts love by being analytical. What does that mean? It means that they seek to understand the world so as to bring meaning to themselves as well as to the world. Many professions are intrinsically analytical, like science, math, philosophy, stock broking, psychology, and theology, but analysts come in all professions. When they are at their loving best, they look too understand how things work, these “things” being money, property, or people. Even ideas. Some analysts enjoy the understanding and ultimate meaning surrounding ideas themselves, like philosophers, theologians, and many analytical psychologists.

A good part of how analysts love the world (and people) is to identify possible problems in order to prevent them, and identify real problems and solve them. Hence, analysts are problem-oriented always looking to make the world a better place. And the world really needs analysts because these folks protect us from harm or damage.

There is another aspect of analysts’ love nature, which is simple love for information. While they seek to understand and find meaning, their actual operation is more in gathering enough information so that a real understanding cam come about, often by preventing or solving problems, but sometimes just for the fun of understanding how something works. They might ask someone who is a very different political or religious persuasion what that person to explain a philosophy or theology that is completely different from the analyst’s own theory just for the purposes of understanding how someone thinks.

Players’ love

Players’ love is experiential. They love to jump right into something and experience it, whatever the “it” is. This experiential is usually physical, but it can be intellectual or emotional, as these two elements of human interaction always erupt from experience. Players are at their best when they can love the world by being fully in it. This almost always means being physically involved in something. Originally, I conceived as players as excitement-oriented, but the more I have studied and thought about the phenomenon the more I have come to see that, while excitement is often a key ingredient and an addition to experience with players, they are not seeking excitement so much as they are experience.

Players naturally evolve into many trades or professions that are intrinsically physical, like the trades of plumbing and carpentry although most tradesmen are primarily caretakers, like my neighbor, Lonnie. More often, players seek experience in sports, music, other art forms, or some kind of physical involvement that is more experiential than productive. There is a lot more experience in a basketball than production. If we look at players who gravitate towards sports, we can see the joy that sports bring to them. Likewise, the same can be said of musicians and other artists. Sometimes this “play” is very serious as with the musician works diligently to find the exact means of performance, or perhaps construction of music.  And there are players who are simply those who appreciate music so much that they can get lost in it.

Players’ experience-based nature is not limited to the trades, sports, and art. Players also love the experience of human interaction. Players play with people, not so much connect them as loves do or analyze them as analysts do.  In all of these ways players love experience, whether with people or with things. They are enlivened by times when they can be fully engaged with something, someone, or some idea and allow these things to be a part of their various essence.

The challenges of temperament-based love

As you have read these lines, it is likely that you have seen some kind of danger in all these forms of love. Indeed, every temperament has a tendency to love the way they love to a fault, which means they love genuinely enough but their love causes problems. Let’s look at some.

Caretaker’s challenges in love

Note what caretakers see: they see things. Note what caretakers do: they do things. Note what they see: things. There is nothing wrong with what they see, what they do, and what they love. As with all temperaments, and all people, it is the seeing, doing, and loving to a fault that gets caretakers in trouble. This expression, “to a fault,” is one that we have used in our feelings book and in other publications. It means that someone does a basically good thing so much that it no longer is a good thing. Caretakers tend to get lost in their love of things and doings.

Caretakers love for property keeps them busy because there is always property to care for. Look around you and you will see all kinds of property. As I look out my office window, I see the parking lot, our house, a car, gardens, trees, and sidewalks, to say nothing of the things that I see beyond our property. A caretaker like me can see so much that he gets lost in the seeing. In my case everything I just mentioned needs some kind of work or it might need some kind of work. Furthermore, the very blog I am working on is a kind of “thing” that needs work. If I don’t watch out, I can get lost taking care of all these things. Then, I can be in trouble. First, I could be exhausted after I changed the oil in the car, cut the lawn, and all the rest of the things that are staring me in the face. Secondly, I could very easily…because of my love for the care of property…fail to love my wife, my family, my friends, and other people the way lovers do, to say nothing of loving ideas the way analysts do, or actually experience this beautiful day that God has provided for me. But enough about me. The caretakers I know tend to work too much, get tired frequently, become irritable (because of all the work they’re doing), and fail to take care of their bodies.

One final comment about caretakers: they can fall into taking care to a fault of people, get drained and get lost in the caretaking. Often they caretaking of people is the result of their doing too much work, but they can also “work” by listening too much, fixing too much, and hence failing to take care of their own needs.

Lovers’ challenges in love

So, how do lovers love to a fault? How is it possible for someone like a lover to love people too much? It is not the loving too much that lovers do, it is the things that they do that are not good for them. As I have said, lovers love people and tend to be generous, accepting, and sacrificial. Lovers slide from genuine giving to giving in. Giving in is not loving. I often say to the lovers who are in my office: give all you have; give your money, your time, your property; give your left arm if it seems right; give your life if it is right. But don’t give in. It is a slippery slope from giving to giving in, and lovers tend to slip too easily.

You can know when lovers give in: they get resentful and otherwise angry. It is a tragic sight to see lovers move from the beauty of sacrificial and beneficial love to the artificial love of giving in. They give in because they see that a friend needs something, often comfort, a listening ear, or an opportunity to stay overnight because the friend’s spouse is allegedly abusive. They want to love and they want to heal. Unfortunately, lovers can fall into, say, allowing the friend to overstay her welcome, like three nights instead of one, or three months or three years. I often see lover parents allowing their adult children to stay with them for months or years because their children have ruined their lives in some way and seemingly need someone to rescue them. More importantly, lovers tend to stay in relationships that are not good, not good for them, and ultimately not good for their partners because they have such a hard time setting limits and recognizing their own needs. When you see an unhappy lover, you are probably seeing someone who has given in so much and so often that he or she “can’t” get out of the relationship. Lovers tend to get lost in loving other people: this is the essence of having such a value on “us” that the “I” part of life has nearly disappeared.

Analysts’ challenges in love

Analysts love to a fault in two ways: gathering information and processing information. What does this mean? Analysts simply love information. They love learning and they love thinking about what they have learned. The problem that sometimes can be a challenge for lovers is that they mistakenly think that they can have all the information in the universe so that they are fully prepared for whatever action is necessary. Analysts often put things off, like decisions, because they are always gathering information. It is as if they believe that they can’t make a mistake if they only know everything. This is admirable and to some degree true, but it is not entirely true because you can never have all the information about anything. So analysts can become lost in the gathering of information, whether searching the internet, reading, asking authorities, or just observing the world around them. Caretakers see everything and want to preserve it or fix it. Analysts everything and are fascinated by what they see. Their love for information sometimes causes them to be impotent at actually using the information.

The second difficulty analysts have in loving ideas, information, and truth lies in their tendency to see what is wrong, or what could be wrong, and then speak about it. This tendency makes analysts look “critical.” While they take a critical look at things and people, they are not by nature critical as we normally use the term, much less mean-spirited. But because they always are on the lookout for what is wrong, they can appear critical. No one likes to be criticized, so when they speak of what is wrong with a friend’s toilet, that person might be offended more than informed of the problem. Furthermore, they tend to be quite open with their challenges, almost never meaning to be demeaning, but their comments about someone’s hair style, car, idea, or profession can easily be construed as mean-spirited. If you hear from your love one that you “are always critical and negative,” consider that you are not “critical and negative” but you appear that way to your loved one.

In addition to failing to decide in a reasonable amount of time and their tendency to appear to be critical, analysts are not the best at receiving criticism themselves. While it is difficult for anyone to receive correction and correction as noted above, it is quite hard for analysts to hear that they have made a mistake because they try so hard to do the right thing only after they have thought it over 100 times.

Players’ challenges in love

Players are perhaps the least self-reflective of the four temperaments. This is not a reflection on some kind of flaw they have in their character. Rather, they simply engage and experience so easily and so much that they don’t have a lot of time leftover to see what they have done that could have been untoward. Think of players often playing with everything. So, money is play money, property is a potential toy, people are playmates, and the world is a playground. Nothing wrong with all this experiencing, excitement, and playing because it is the way a player gives life to things and to people. The difficulty is that players tend to ignore the consequences of what they say or do because of the focus they have on the actual action itself.

Having raised a player myself, having had many player friends, many more player children in my practice, and having a good part of player in me, I can say that I am quite familiar with the joys and the sorrows of playing. I see many times how I hurt or harmed people out of my desire to experience life in some way. I have said things and done things with the best of intention but the effects have been harmful. In the best of times players love experience and want everyone else to love experience. They, like people of all temperaments, think that everyone else should be playing and experiencing life as a primary way of loving not giving credence to how others love.  Have you frequently said, “I didn’t mean to do it,” “I didn’t know that would hurt you,” “I was just playing” and other such statements when something goes array? You may be a player. You have loved the experience to a fault without realizing the effect of the experience on others or on yourself.

Stay tuned. Next up:

  • Love problems (emotions associated with love)
  • Being lovable
  • Love heals
  • Not loved right

 

Perfect Love Prevents Fear

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

In one of the later books of the New Testament, the writer and apostle, John, states this:

“There is no fear I love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4.18, New International Version).

Other versions of this passage adjust words to some degree (The King James version has, “perfect love drives out fear, or casts out fear), but the message is the same. You might find it valuable to read the verses before and after this verse, which includes many words about love: God’s love for us, our love for others, and what the essence of love is. John is often cited as the “love apostle” because of his focus on love. He is the only writer to say, “God is love” although other writers describe God with other characteristics like truth, infinite, even beautiful. My task in this blog is not so much to give a biblical examination or presentation but to note that this idea of love “driving out” fear is interesting at the least. And this idea of love conquering fear (among other things) continues to be a position Deb and I have taken in our work and in our writings. In this blog I will offer my take on how “love drives out fear,” other things that loves “drives out,” what it means to “drive out,” a bit about what love is, and a good bit about what fear is. We think more importantly that perfect love prevents fear. The way we see it, fear is a “love problem.”

Fear is one of four basic emotions

Deb and I have been working with the concept of feelings for decades as well as the subset of feelings, emotions. This may come as a surprise unless you have followed our writings on the subjects. In The Positive Power of Sadness we discussed the centrality of the emotion of sadness. In our more recent I Want to Tell You How I Feel, we present a paradigm of feelings and identify emotion as an expression of feelings. We use the term “feelings” as representing the central core of an individual, sometimes called inner self, core self, or even God inside of me. We propose that feelings are expressed in four ways always in sequence: physical, emotional, cognitive, and active. Thus, emotion is an expression of feelings, and thus emotions are not to be equated with core self. We also proposed in this book that people tend to express their feelings in one of these four ways and may express them in another of these four ways. Yet everyone experiences feelings first physically and so on. The problem with most people is that we have not matured in our understanding, valuing, and expressing our emotions, much less the deeper, spiritual nature of our feelings.

Beyond this understanding of emotions being a subset of feelings, we understand that we have four basic emotions that are all related to love in some way:

  • Joy: the emotion associated with having something I love
  • Sadness: the emotion associated with the immediate losing of something that I love
  • Fear: the emotion associated with the possibility of losing something I love
  • Anger: the emotion associated the past loss of something that I love

In addition to this understanding of the current functioning of emotions, we propose that these four emotions are developed naturally in early childhood, e.g.:

  • Fear is the predominant emotion of an infant 0-12 months old. The infant is fearful or calm, but not angry, joyful, or sad
  • Joy is the predominant emotion of the second year of life. The infant discovers the joy of loving something, e.g. person, place, activity or thing. Ideally, the 1-2 year old is less afraid but still has the intrinsic fear that is accompanied by potential danger because s/he can’t yet really take care of her/himself
  • Anger: the predominate emotion of the toddler years, ages 2-6. Anger develops as a means of defense against the frequent “assaults” that toddlers get because of being restricted. Think of it this way: they got almost all of what they needed the first year life; they got most of what they wanted in the second year of life. But now they can walk, talk, throw, yell, and scream. So, they use these things to attempt to get what they want. They do not normally distinguish between wants and needs.
  • Sadness: this is the last and by far the most important emotion that children develop. Ideally by age 6, they have a rudimentary understanding that they don’t get most of what they want although it will take many more years to truly understand that it is normal and ultimately good for them to not get what they want.
  • Few kids get through these stages ideally.

So, what is the “love problem” associated with fear? It is the emotion associated with being afraid of never getting what I want, or perhaps need. Importantly, an infant does not distinguish between wants and needs. (Unfortunately, many adults have failed to make that distinction as well.) If the infant is not afraid when s/he needs food, comfort, or care, s/he will not survive. Fear is the most basic emotion we have, and as a result, fear is the emotion that the brain churns up when the brain feels there is danger. Why does the brain churn up fear when there doesn’t appear to be anything to be afraid of?

The brain and perceived danger

I have to start by reminding you that the brain is a machine. An incredible machine, mind you, but a machine. The brain doesn’t know anything. It is just like your computer. Your computer doesn’t know anything despite the fact that most people end up talking to (or yelling or swearing at) their computers, which are, like the brain, machines. Your brain knows two things and two things only: safe (or lack thereof), and pleasure (or lack thereof). Your brain doesn’t know people, love, ideas, things, or anything else. Your brain is programed to take care of you, namely providing safety and pleasure. Furthermore, your brain doesn’t know the future or the past, but rather just the present. So, in a manner of speaking, your brain is pretty “stupid” aside from being the most advanced machine in the known universe. So, here’s the picture as the brain sees it: provide safety, and if that’s taken care of, encourage pleasure. The pleasure part of the brain is hormonal, namely endorphins that are essentially happy chemicals (endorphins) that the brain secretes when you are doing something that brings your pleasure. The pleasure orientation that the brain has can lead to addictions but that is not part of our current discussion. I want to focus on the danger orientation that the brain has. So, here’s the picture as the brain sees it when it sees that there is some kind of danger:

  • Your mind thinks of something that is in the future that might be dangerous.
  • Your brain, not knowing the future, thinks there is some present danger
  • Your brain then churns up cortisol, which is the chemical that causes you to be aware, or perhaps hyper aware
  • Your brain churns up cortisol so you can be aware of the immediate danger that the brain thinks exists in the present
  • The brain doesn’t know that you might be thinking of something that might happen in the future, perhaps an hour later or a year later. The brain doesn’t understand the future, so it does whenever it determines that there is danger.
  • You feel some kind of increased vigilance, or perhaps even hypervigilance, which is identified by increased heart rate, increased breathing, and an increased awareness of the problem that is before you.
  • In all this, the brain is protecting you from what it perceives as present danger. It’s doing its job: protecting you. You didn’t ask the brain to do this. It did it all on its own.
  • You feel some kind of anxiety, which is a cognate of fear. The brain has done this for you. You experience it as fear; your brain experiences this as danger and the need to be hyperaware.
  • Think of it this way: you think about an interview that you will have tomorrow. As you think about this interview, you begin to worry that you might know what to say or how to say it. You’re brain hears this message but not the content (because the brain is “stupid” about such things.) The brain thinks something like, “There is a lion coming over the hill and we have to be prepared for fight or flight.) There is no lion, and in fact there is no immediate danger, but your brain doesn’t know that.
  • Your brain sort of “talks” to your mind (because your brain can’t think), and sort of says, “Please mind, figure out how we can protect ourselves from the lion,” even though there is no lion.
  • So you end up thinking more, and the more you think, the more you can’t know what you might say or do, and the more you end up worrying.
  • Sound familiar?

I try to help people understand this mind/brain interaction and get the mind in control of the brain, thus forestalling the brain taking control of the physical process of surviving and getting you to worry. That is also another story that we don’t have time to discuss at the present. Rather, I want to talk about the “love problem” that is at the heart of the fear that the brain churns up.

Fear is a love problem

Fear is the emotion associated with danger. In practical terms, however, we must ask, “What am I afraid of when I experiencing fear (or anxiety or worry). Understanding this phenomenon is central to overcoming 99% of fear and 100% of anxiety and worry. I need to be afraid if I am in genuine danger, like being stabbed by an assailant or being crushed by an 18-wheeler that has moved into my lane, but these things are the 1% of fear that is valuable and life-saving. It is no easy task to overcome the other 99% of fear. Underneath the question, “What am I afraid” of is the more important question, “What do I love that I am afraid of losing?”

There are several categories of things that I love, and hence might be afraid of losing. They are:

  • Property
  • People
  • Social contact
  • Freedom
  • Ideas
  • Self

Normally, we think of losses as having to do with people, like losing a friend for some reason, someone dying or getting divorced. Indeed, these are important losses. But the other elements I have noted could be even more difficult to lose. People that we call “caretakers,” like me, truly love property and the care of property, something that seems materialistic to non-caretakers, but the love of property is quite different from hoarding or acquiring. The loss of freedom for whatever reason, perhaps losing a job or being incarcerated, can be a terrible loss, and all of these losses are related to loving freedom. Likewise, the loss of an idea, perhaps the idea that you could become a lawyer but fail the LSAT, or the idea that you could really change the world in some way…all of these ideas are based on loving something be it abstract.

Of all the things that can be loved that I have noted (and there are certainly more), by far the most important one is love of self. I believe that one naturally loves him/herself at a deep level, but this love of self does not equate with liking oneself, much having someone else like you or love you. The loss of self-liking is frequent, as it should be, for instance, when I simply make a mistake and end up not liking what I did or even my approach to something. You can never lose your love for yourself because it is endemic to being human, but you can lose track of this love if you end up not liking yourself or you have important people not like you. So what does love have to do with fear, and the prevention of fear?

Perfect love prevents fear

Consider that every time you are afraid (or anxious or worried), you are concerned that you might lose something, namely the things mentioned above, like people and ideas. So, the essence of fear is love-based. Think of fear as love-based, and you will be able to conquer fear, and eventually you will be able to prevent fear altogether. There is no good reason to be afraid of losing anything at any time. Fear does not engender effective care, nor does it help you cope with a loss that you might have sometime in the future. Almost all fear is delusional.

What does that mean? Delusional? What am I talking about here? I suggest that most fear is delusional because fear turns into fretting, worrying, and other forms of anxiety. This occurs because of our “stupid” brain that does not understand the difference between immediate danger and future danger. This marvelous machine that we call the brain “thinks” that if it churns up cortisol and creates hypervigilance in you, you will then be protected from the raging lion that is coming over the hill. So when you are anxious about something, you are “delusional” because you have this brain-mind interaction that acts without your knowing it and feeds upon itself. Fear of the unknown and any kind of fear of the future is delusional because this mind-brain interaction sort of “believes” that if I worry enough about the future, I will change the future. You know better than that. I know better than that. But your brain doesn’t know that and then the brain gets your mind to believe that you can change the future by worrying. The only way to get out of this anxiety-based delusional thinking is to conquer fear or prevent fear by facing the love that you have because “perfect love prevents fear” as the biblical reference suggests. So how do I do that?

I face the fact that I have a “love problem,” namely that I love something that I could lose. When I face the fact that I love something and may lose this something, I will feel what we call anticipatory sadness. In other words, I allow myself to feel the potential sadness that I would feel if I lost this something that I love. And the deeper the love, the deeper the sadness. This is not an easy concept to understand, much less utilize in preventing fear and anxiety, but it works if you allow yourself to go with it. By the way, your brain isn’t going to help you in this process, so you have to learn to get your mind (soul, spirit, self) in control of this machine-brain. In order to prevent fear, you need to actually allow yourself to imagine losing the thing you love, e.g.:

  • Losing your life, your freedom, your idea…this is most important
  • Losing people you love, whether permanently or temporarily
  • Losing property, position, or possibility

What I am asking you to do is very hard. And you most certainly don’t want to do it. Of course, you don’t want to do it. Who wants to be sad? Who in their right mind would actually choose to be sad? Your brain certainly doesn’t want you to be sad, so your brain is of no help here. You have to use your mind. You have to imagine losing the thing you love and allow yourself to feel sad. Here’s the crux of this strategy of “perfect love prevents fear”: sadness ends. Fear doesn’t end. If you feel sad, deep enough and long enough, you will no longer feel sad. You will have faced the potential loss, grieved the potential loss, and finished feeling sad about this potential loss. By the way, eventually your brain will get on board with this program and not fight you in the process of anticipatory grief because your brain will learn that sadness is good for you because sadness is a “love problem.”

So be courageous and consider that you would feel sad (not afraid) if you lost:

  • Your property
  • Your life
  • Your spouse
  • Your child
  • Your idea
  • Your plan
  • Your freedom
  • …and anything else that you love.

By the way, remember, perfect love prevents fear and drives out fear. You are not perfect. You do not love anything perfectly. Therein lies the real task: to get better at loving, looking for perfection in loving, which means by the way, that you know that you will most certainly lose everything you love, but in the meantime you can enjoy loving what you have. Love everything with an open hand knowing that you could lose it at any time. Do this and you will find that get better and better at loving…and losing…and loving again.

The Challenges of Honesty, Openness, and Truth

Ron Johnson communication, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, Personality, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

I am no philosopher, but like all people, I delve into the medium and art of philosophy unavoidably as we all do. I am certain that philosophes could be bemused by my meanderings in their territory with my minimal training and understanding of such things. I am often bemused by people meandering into the realm of psychology, like the current days when seemingly everyone has at least one psychological diagnosis. So, granting my philosophical superiors much greater understanding of things philosophical, I will indulge myself by attempting to blend the philosophical concept of “truth” and its cognates with things that I do understand, namely the different characteristics of personality.

This blog has been brewing for several weeks in my mind but just the morning I received a request from a patient of mine that required me to delve into the matter of honesty. In this man’s case, he asked that I render some advice as to how he should handle a complex situation in his life that centered on a forthcoming funeral for his father. I did my best to help him migrate these murky waters but not without a good deal of thought and feeling. This matter of truth and its cognates, openness and honesty is no easy matter. I did my best with my patient, and I will do my best with this blog but admittedly I am not particularly skilled in the philosophical matters. It does occur to me that the very words, philosophy, derives from the Greek, namely philos, which means “love” and Sophia, which means wisdom; hence the love of wisdom. (Note that Philadelphia derives from philos and adelphos, which means brother; hence “the city of brotherly love). So, when we delve into philosophical matters, such as truth, we are seeking to “love wisdom,” perhaps thinking the wise thing or doing the wise thing,

In this blog I will dare to fuse the concepts of personality and philosophy with the grave danger of being simplistic or artificial. If you have followed me over these recent years, you have heard me speak of personality type and personality temperament among other elements of making what I call a “friendly diagnosis.” It is in this context that I wish to share with you some things about the whole business of truth and its cognates, openness and honesty. I originally thought of entitling this blog something like “different kinds of lying,” but then I listened to my own way of thinking about life and psychology and decided it would be better to look at how people of different personality stipes might face the matter of truth et al. Among the ways of understanding differences in personality, I often make use of the terms “personality type” and “temperament,”

And occasionally differences in personal development, cultural background, and differences in the various aspects of intelligence. Instead of examining all of these elements of human existence, I choose to focus on a couple of areas of personality, and examine how we could examine truth, or the lack thereof, within these boundaries, possibly leaving other ways of examination for a later exploration. Before I dare to dive into how differences of personality affect one’s approach to truth, we must consider the whole concept of truth itself.

Truth and consequences

Obviously, I borrow this title from the parlor game and the TV show that existed before most of you were born. I intend to render (perhaps my simplistic) distinctions between the terms honesty, truth, and openness because while they are second cousins these three terms represent somewhat different elements of the idea of being honest. My minimal understanding of these terms is as follows:

  • Truth: something that is accurate or an accurate representation of something. Hence there are “truthful words that represent a feeling, a thought, or an action.
  • Honesty: speaking the truth as one knows it. Perhaps also keeping silent so as to avoid agreeing with a statement made by another person that is felt/thought to be untrue. There is also the element of “being honest with yourself”…or not.
  • Openness: the expression, or perhaps a personality tendency, to express one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions

As a result, we have the complex situations where:

  • A person could be honest not actually be speaking the truth because s/he did not know the whole truth. It is even possible for someone to be speaking the truth as s/he sees it but it is not actually the truth. Children do this all the time and are false accused of “lying” when they actually “saw the ghost in the room.”
  • A person who could be open in some expression but not necessarily be honest. I may openly espouse something that I don’t actually believe. This might be as the simple nod of the head when you hear something that you don’t agree with so as to avoid hurting your friend’s feelings.
  • A person can speak the truth but not being open about certain matters that relate to the truth s/he is speaking. This is something like speaking some of the truth but not all of it. It is this element that I want to tackle next.

Different kinds of truth in personality characteristics

Here I choose to examine three elements (of the available four) that are the result of the Jungian concept of psychological type or as Myers-Briggs calls it, personality type. Here I note examples of how people engage the world of truth and its cognates differently.

Differences in perception: how we see the world

  • I see the world objectively. Hence I see things as they are, not as they should be or the way I would like them to be. I tend to make statements rather than asking questions. I tend to be honest with what I see, but because I don’t see all that can be, I do not see the whole picture, namely something that could happen, or perhaps even should happen. This roughly falls into the category of being “honest but not necessarily speaking the truth.” Such people tend to get lost in the real world, perhaps the practical world but often miss the rest of life that is not real and objective. I can “lie” to other people without realizing that I am “lying” because I didn’t see all there was to see. Kierkegaard said of these people, “everything is real but nothing is meaningful.”
  • I see the world subjectively. Hence, I see what could be, might be, or should be, but not necessarily what actually is. I tend to be honest about looking for things, and often ideas and tend to ask questions. I can be quite satisfied to ask questions without having complete answers. I want to speak the truth and often do so but I to be “dishonest” by getting lost is ideas, possibilities and questions. I tend to “lie to myself” in the constant finding new ideas and having new questions but not really doing anything real. Kierkegaard said of these people, “all things are possible but nothing is real.”
  • I evaluate the world objectively: Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” If I evaluate objectively, I think objectively, feel objectively, and act objectively. What you see is what you get. I reason with logic and have a sense of the ultimate fairness in making a decision that is based on reason. I do the “right” thing…regardless of how anyone “feels” and even regardless of how I feel. I can get caught in being truthful to logic but not truthful to my feelings, much less anyone else’s feelings.
  • I evaluate the world subjective. Descartes could have said, “I feel, therefore I am,” although many contemporary psychological writers have suggested that could be a way of looking at decisions. If I evaluate subjectively, I “feel,” whatever that means (read our book, please), and attend to my feelings and other people’s feelings. “Truth” is thus highly related to feelings and to relationships and cannot be explored, felt, or expressed apart from these elements. Thus, I can speak “truth” that is related mostly to how I feel or someone else feels, which may actually be truthful in the objective sense of the terms
  • I am energized by being with people: I talk in order to be listened to and to be talked to. I tend to be “open” with my thoughts and/or feelings and expect other people to do the same. This openness, however, is not always exactly “true” because I can embellish, enlarge, or elaborate with colorful metaphors seeking to “communicate” what I feel or think. This amounts to being open but not entirely honest. I also can fall into not being honest with myself for the sake of communicating with someone. I tend to “lie” objectively, say something that is not factually true.
  • I am energized by being alone or with one special person. I tend to keep my feelings entirely to myself and most of my thoughts to myself. I am honest with myself but not necessarily honest with people around me perhaps thinking, “It’s none of their business what I think or feel unless I want them to know.” I tend to lie subjectively, i.e. not saying something that is true.

Examples of “lying” by good people

You might enjoy reading my blog, “Why Good Men Lie,” which examines the tendency of men to lie to women. In the same blog I suggest that while men lie to their spouses, unfortunately, women tend to lie to themselves, also unfortunately.

I am reminded of an experience I had 30 years ago with a group of men who regularly attended a men’s group that I led. One night one fellow named Bill said to the group that he believed that some of the men didn’t like him, and proceeded to ask whether this was true. Each man responded to the question, and I remember one man saying to this man that he “flat out didn’t like him,” while another man said, “Sure, Bill, I like you.” I inquired with the second man privately why he said that he liked Bill given that I had heard that he most certainly didn’t like him at all. His response: “he is not important to me so I didn’t feel compelled to tell him the truth.” Some weeks later, Bill was speaking about some subject what seemed to go on without profit and one after another men left the group, seemingly bored or disinterested. This left one man yet in the room with Bill, the man who said that he “flat out didn’t like” him. Such a mix of truth and consequences, truth, honesty, and openness.

I have seen many courageous statements of truth despite the consequences:

  • The man who speaks his mind and as a result is not allowed to graduate from a seminary because that “truth” didn’t seem to fit with the “truth” the seminary held
  • The woman, in the company of his former husband, when the two of them were discussing the challenges of their son. She said that the reason that the two of them had been divorced was that she had been “unfaithful” and possibly caused their son harm because of it
  • The child (actually, many children) who said, “I hate you” to his parents. He didn’t know it at the time but he had the permission to say such things because he lived in a loving home.
  • A few politicians who are courageous enough to challenge the party line and take the consequences. Liz Cheney comes to mind as does John McCain.

I have seen many more examples of the lack of truth spoken…or not spoken:

  • The several women who spring the “D” word on their husbands having evidently lived with someone they didn’t like for years…or decades
  • The several men who have been unfaithful to their spouses, sometimes with their common friends or relatives
  • The teenager who has simply not found the social maturity to be honest about whether he did, indeed, brush his teeth or take a shower

 

These are my current thoughts. But I must leave you with this, abridging the statement, “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Perhaps truth is also in the eyes of the beholder. But I am also cognizant of Shakespeare’s statement, “When first we practice to deceive, oh what a tangled web we weave.” I am brought back to the patient I mentioned at the beginning who is trying to find a way to be wise, kind, loving, and honest with his family, girlfriend, and himself. He has a very tangled web that has been constructed by many people including himself.