- Home
- Preface
- Introduction
- Three Zones and Nine Sectors
- Wings and Moves and other functions
- Biblical Journeys
- Prayer
- The Enneagram
- From the Enneagram to the Strategy Board
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Confession at FOUR
I am FOUR. Deep down I’m envious. That’s my brokenness. I’m usually too ashamed or too caught up in my own feelings to admit this. I’m so afraid of the pain of rejection. I long to be special, to be different, somehow to rise above the ordinary and the mundane. I am especially sensitive to beauty in all its forms. I love anything that is simple, natural, authentic. My standards are so high that the more I try to reach them, the more artificial I become. I can’t help comparing myself with people who have more talent, taste, sophistication, and class than I have, and longing to be somehow superior.
I envy them the ease with which they seem to live their lives. It’s easier for me to live in memories, dreams, and the world of the arts than in the everyday world, where the mess is part of the reality. I have real problems with intimacy and distance. What I have, I don’t value; what I long for, I treasure. I’m regularly disappointed by life and I live with a deep sense of loss. Why do others seem to have it all? Even in my relationships I’m jealous of others being somehow more interesting or attractive than I am. I’m ashamed of my body, my inner turmoil torments me, and I regularly run myself down.
Lord God, all of this causes me intense inner suffering. I go through a roller-coaster of feelings, from ecstatic joy to inexpressible sadness. People think this is just moodiness. If only they knew how deep it goes, they’d see what a dreadful burden it is.
Life is such a struggle for me, Lord, yet I’m tragically unwilling to accept help. Please help me. Help me to appreciate the special sensitivity you have given me – the ability to understand at depth the emotional life of others. Show me how to be realistic enough not to imagine this world as the safe haven of my dreams, but as holding in balance tears and laughter, pain and joy, ugliness and beauty, violence and peace. Help me not to be so elitist, so snobbish, but to value the normal, the ordinary, and the everyday.
We are FOURs. For us the movement is from the romanticized memories of the past and the hoped-for visions of the future to the humdrum reality of the present. We need to learn to be at ease and content with the way things are, understanding that ‘God is in the pots and pans,’ that we meet God in the ordinary, the everyday, the mundane, the pedestrian, the hackneyed. Rather than bemoan people’s misunderstanding of who we are, we should try to use our talents of empathy, communication, and creativity to create a voice for the things of the heart – for all.