Exploring who we can be

I suspect that if there is one psychological concept that I abhor more than all others it is the idea that we each have a personality. 

A bit surprised?

From a western point of view and, let's face it, psychology is very strongly influenced by western people, it would seem obvious that we have our own personality. It's a no brainer isn't it?  We take our personality for granted and would never doubt that we have our own personality.

Well, if you opened me up you wouldn't find a personality!  It isn't a thing that it exists.  Personality is a concept that we have developed over the years to make sense of our experience that people are, by and large, fairly consistent in the way they act.  Personality is a  metaphor, an assumption a construct.  It does not exist except in our talk about ourselves.

"OK, Caroline, I see your point (sort of) but why does it get you upset?  It's a pretty harmless idea"

What gets me upset, frustrated and angry is that people find themselves hemmed in by personality.  So, the shy person will behave in a shy way, the inarticulate person will keep quiet and the gregarious person will regret (occasionally) talking too much.  There are subtleties in this of course and there are debates and differences.  Are our personalities caused by our genes or our social context.  But, to a large extent, we are fixed in our personalities.  We can't escape from them.

OK, OK, I'm aware that there are some pretty subtle approaches to personality and our interaction with others and our potential to develop ourselves but nearly all of these ignore a wonderful set of 'tools' for creating new 'us'. 

In my last post about 'exploring' type learning I was writing about contemplative exploration in this post I want to mull over how we can explore physically and how that learning can take place and be encouraged.

A sweeping statement here - that doesn't do justice to the more subtle approaches to personality - but it'll do to help me get on to what I really want to write about.  Personality theories imply that our actions and who we are are generated from within us from a store of attributes that were either born into us or have been worked into us by our experiences.  This implication ignores two important points about Christian belief.

1. that who we are is determined not by our past but by our future. We are going to be perfect and we are gradually being transformed into that perfection (in my case, so slowly that I doubt that my friends can see it :-(
2. that, as Christians, our fullest expression of ourselves is not as individuals but as The Body of Christ, we are not working at our best until we are working as contributions to the ongoing, emerging, ever developing, yet to be completed body of Christ.

Now this is crucial, who I am, who I can be and what I can do is, to some extent created by you.  I do not create my actions on my own, you and I perform them together. That I talked to you about tennis owes as much to the fact that you mentioned Andy Murray (apols to non Brit readers) as to any internal tendency I might have to like talking about tennis.  That I was bold in venturing out owes much to your encouragement, that I thought of that idea is partly down to the way that the three of us were talking about a certain topic in a particular way.  Our actions are not our own, they are the product of ongoing conversations and co-ordinated actions.

So, you see, I can help you explore new possibilities of who you might be if I can only speak and act in ways that encourage or restrict you.  Children do it all the time.  They play act, pretend play... cops and robbers, doctors and nurses, friends, teachers.... from the earliest years they start to experiment with ways of talking, gradually learning the rules of our 'talking games' and so becoming competent talkers.

This is, I want to say the wondrous freedom that we can have to explore who we might become.  This blog, for example, is my attempt to playact my way into becoming a writer.  I find writing incredibly difficult ("Huh," you mutter under your breath, "we find your writing difficult too, Caroline") so I try to explore ways of writing on this blog... some poems, songs, stories, liturgies and rants....  But there is more... because who we are is performed socially, we can help each other to perform our new selves, we can help each other to try on a 'new us' (of course, this may be a vulnerable position we put ourselves in as we open up to others our aspirations of how we'd long to grow!).

You want to learn how to listen better?  I can help you practice that and give you 'helpful' feedback!  Or maybe you want to increase the frequency of your prayer times with God.. I can ask you how you're getting on, perhaps offer to say morning prayer with you, or come and look after the children whilst you get yourself an hour or so away. In conversations, I can question, doubt or encourage your actions.  I can role play different characters with whom you want to be on better relations.  Just being interested enough to ask after you would probably be a radical difference.  (come on, lets admit it, we're much more likely to ask after each other's health than asking after each other's learning!)

We can explore who we want to become and try out the journey towards that goal and that leads us into the third 'ex' of learning: experimentation.  more of that in a few days.

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[Tory Burch Outlet]

We have used such forms to create Feature/Requirements Documents on a wiki page. Since the page is annotated using Requirements ontology, this provides a very effective approach to link requirements to projects, tasks, bugs, test cases, etc.