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FOUR

At FOUR we are down at the foot of the diagram – a long way from the gut zone and its direct engagement with the outside world. As a head-heart combination, FOUR is very conscious of the inner life of head and heart, and that inner life – rather than the outside world – is FOUR’s natural home. The story of FOUR meeting the world is the story of FOUR’s inner life seeking to engage with the outside world from which it feels distant and separate.

FOUR remains a heart type, longing to reach out to the world: it is the heart that takes the lead in FOUR’s inner life of head and heart. The challenge for FOURs is how to reach out from the heart within to the world outside.

Head and heart work together on this challenge and come to this resolution: that the best and the only way to relate to the world outside is to remain ‘true to yourself’ – true to the inner self. This is the strategy with which FOUR approaches the world.

Head and heart now get to work on the task of being ‘true to the inner self’ while also – for this is a heart type – reaching out to the world. The key to this task is self-presentation: to create a presentation of the self which is true to the inner self and which also reaches out to the world, bridging that gap between the inner life and the world outside – the world of other people and their separate lives. Dress will be important. Manner will be important. Carefully chosen words will be important. Public choices, like where to go and what to do, will be important. For FOUR, life is a work of art, for which the audience is the world.

But the real story of FOUR is the story of FOUR’s inner life. Here, ‘deep in the heart zone,’ FOURs experience things intensely. They are in touch with deep emotions – and in touch with the pain of the world. FOURs have often experienced every human emotion by the age of twenty-five. Counselors are taught never to say ‘I know how you feel’ – but from a FOUR it would often be true.

FOURs have a unique talent for appreciating, understanding, and then expressing the things of the heart. Although some will struggle to find their voice – longing to communicate but not finding the means – many FOURs do find their voice in an artistic expression. A classic FOUR type is the artist, producing poetry or music or painting or sculpture which perfectly expresses love and beauty and the profound things of the heart in a way that others can receive but cannot hope to create. For many FOURs, aesthetics are everything, and beauty is what matters.

It has been said that just about everything in the world that is beautiful was created by a FOUR. Much of the rest came from NINEs, who just produce the stuff effortlessly from somewhere in their gut with minimal thought or emotion, much to the envy of the tortured, struggling FOUR.

The inner life of the heart does tend to relive in the present the emotions and visions and dreams of the past. This is most extreme with FOURs, who endlessly reprocess all that they have seen and experienced – everything that has gone before.

Among the gifts of FOUR are profound gifts of the heart: creativity, empathy, profound communication (‘communion’), and the ability to convert pain into beauty.

On the down side, FOURs can end up living in the past, or wallowing in self-pity, or withdrawing from the world. Like all the corrupted heart types, corrupt FOURs can end up draining instead of enriching those who meet them. Hypochondria is FOUR. The temptation of FOUR is envy: ‘why does everyone else have so much easier a life?’

The national stereotype for FOUR is France: in its self-image it stands alone as the most beautiful nation and language and culture, suffering among ‘vulgar and inferior’ neighbors.

A cartoon animal for FOUR is the peacock. That tail serves no practical purpose – but it is incredibly dramatic and beautiful, and that is justification enough. Other natural FOURs are the cooing mourning dove, or the stylish black horse – stylish, dark, and mysterious – or the basset hound with its big sad eyes.

The perfect icon for the vocation of FOUR is the oyster. The oyster turns grit into pearls: it turns pain into beauty.

FOURs in the Bible include Hosea – whose own painful experiences help him to identify with God’s sorrow over the sinfulness of Israel – and Isaiah, who gives us the beautiful texts about the suffering servant of God. Jeremiah in Lamentations finds the most beautiful promises of God’s faithfulness in the depths of despair, and Shulamith, the initially lonesome lover in Song of Songs, writes beautifully of her passion for her beloved. There is also Joseph, who dreams dreams, understands and interprets dreams, and wears that famously colored coat.

For FOURs, the path from corruption to redemption – from wasted pain to beauty and creativity – involves learning to engage with ordinary non-FOUR people and the wider world – to love in the real world, not reject it as unworthy. This means stilling, or rising above, the endlessly churning emotions, learning to see the beauty in the ordinary, and even learning the art of small talk – demeaning and unworthy though it may at first appear. The peacock discovers that it is possible to have a full and meaningful life as an ordinary farmyard chicken: the fancy tail is a bonus, not the essence; the authentic self is found in ordinary simplicity, not in further striving for yet more difference. To support all of this, FOURs, who are furthest of all from the gut zone, do need to remember three incarnational basics: to take some exercise, get some fresh air, and eat the right food.

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