- Home
- Preface
- Introduction
- Three Zones and Nine Sectors
- Wings and Moves and other functions
- Wings and moves – introduction
- The wings – the neighboring sectors
- Moves across the board
- No better, no worse
- A chosen move
- Life on the axis
- Lost FOURs and false TWOs
- Access all areas
- Longing for the opposite
- Colleagues of the opposite type
- Discerning home base part 2
- Couples
- Colleagues and friends
- Age and the journey
- The path to redemption part 2
- Biblical Journeys
- Prayer
- The Enneagram
- From the Enneagram to the Strategy Board
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Lost FOURs and false TWOs
Contemporary western society is full of ‘lost FOURs’ and ‘false TWOs.’
Our culture does not place a high value on the gifts of FOUR or encourage its vocation. While we like to have creativity and beauty available as commodities – on sale in the shops as required – we do not generally encourage our own to become artists and poets.
As a result, we are surrounded by ‘lost FOURs’ – people whose natural gifts would be at FOUR, but who are living out their lives in some other role.
Some FOURs make it through and live their lives at FOUR – but the lost FOURs take refuge in FOUR’s alternative strategies: the wings and the stress and security types.
Our society does ‘allow’ FIVE – providing various niches for the wise and quiet bookish type – and it positively encourages the popular motivating THREE. Some lost FOURs will take refuge in these ‘acceptable’ roles, which are on FOUR’s wings. If you see the quest for understanding of observer FIVE, but none of the easy contentment of group-member SIX, it may be a case of lost FOUR. Is there something, perhaps, of heart-zone THREE? And if you see THREE’s heart-zone gift of inspiring others combined not so much with the one-to-one engagement of TWO but with a quieter observing thoughtfulness – an aspect of FIVE – it may again be a case of lost FOUR.
Other lost FOURs take refuge in FOUR’s stress and security types, living out their lives at ONE and TWO. People whose FOURish gifts would otherwise lead them into the arts, end up at ONE as engineers or solicitors or accountants or pharmacists, or at TWO in ‘the caring professions.’ They sometimes find their way home later in life, surprising people with an apparently new interest in music or painting or furniture restoration or local history or genealogy or creative writing. If somebody seems to be all ONE and TWO, they could well be ‘lost FOUR’ – and FOUR is where their most natural gifts will be found.
The phenomenon of ‘the lost FOURs’ emerges from the expectations of contemporary western society. These expectations are changing in subtle ways all the time – but an enduring feature is that they often differ according to gender. Society at large is more ready to allow to women than to men a FOURish artistic and creative side – but more than anything, it expects of women a TWOish giving and caring role, in the home and beyond. Many women are pushed by the pressures around them into assuming only this giving and caring role, even when their real gifts lie elsewhere. These are the ‘false TWOs.’
The real home base of ‘false TWO’ may be idealistic ONE, with wings NINE and TWO, or inspirational THREE, with wings TWO and FOUR – but they are pushed into living life entirely in the TWO wing, as ‘false TWO.’
Or the real home base may be a strong and challenging EIGHT or – inevitably – a creative FOUR: but they are pushed to their stress or security point to live life as ‘false TWO.’
Parenthood rightly demands immeasurable amounts of giving and caring – a task best shared by both parents but too often left to the mother. It can be a wonderful liberation later in life for a role-bound ‘false TWO’ to begin to rediscover their other natural gifts and the rest of their vocation at their natural home base – whatever that may be.
There are other ‘false’ and ‘lost’ phenomena. Western society has historically defined confrontational EIGHT as a ‘masculine’ role, as well as defining caring TWO as a ‘feminine’ role: indeed all the types could be ranked by different degrees of artificial gender stereotyping.
The reality is that the resources of head and heart and gut are distributed without regard to gender. All that the culture has achieved with its stereotyping is to create the further classes of female ‘lost EIGHTs’ and male ‘lost TWOs’ and so on – all of whom will rejoice to find their way home.
More recently, strong women at EIGHT and caring men at TWO have become celebrated icons of contemporary culture – distinctive in comparison to the assumptions of the past, but lauded and applauded in the ‘post-feminist’ present.
In the end, any culture – or any micro-culture like a household or a workplace or a church – can force whole classes of people into trying to be what they are not. Depending on the time and the place and the reason, people can end up living in a role that neglects or even denies their real gifts. The journey back to home base may be painful and stressful in many ways, but it is back at home base that each person will ultimately find their best gifts and their true vocation.