We are mortal. If we are lucky, we manage to live a few decades before confronting what this really means. In the past year both I and my partner have received news that a parent has cancer. Mine had a good prognosis. His does not. We just received the news of his parent’s illness today.

We take turns in our relationship. When my mother was ill, I cried, was scared and sad. I felt plagued by regret and doubt (have I been a good enough daughter?). Then I had my own health scare, a reminder that I too could develop cancer. Suddenly life felt more tenuous to me. I’m almost 41; it’s time to accept the inevitable. Now that my partner has learned of his father’s illness, I feel detached and numb. Is there something wrong with me, I wonder? But I think it’s a coping response. One of us needs to remain steady, and he did that for me.

We have also had some employment concerns that raise the possibility of relocation due to his imminent layoff. With this recent news, I feel as though the ground has disintegrated beneath us.

So what does a person do when life is thrown into chaos?

The answer: the best one can.

Someone asked me how I’m feeling, and I replied I was okay, though I feel a little insane around the edges.

So here is what I will do. I will focus on whatever tasks present themselves to me. Routine gives structure: meals need to be cooked, dishes washed, workouts done, showers taken, beds made, laundry folded. The bills continue to arrive and need to be paid. Cats want to be petted and fed.

Here is what else I will do. I will give my partner what he needs, whether it is a hug, a listening ear, or quiet time. I will seek the support I need from my friends and family, who are many in number and generous in heart. I will put my own agenda aside for awhile. (You know, the “what’s in it for me and where is our relationship going?” one.)

Living in the present means experiencing. So I will savor the earthy flavor of my morning coffee. I will read my books, being grateful that I have an alert mind and live in a country that does not restrict my choices. I will remember to breathe, to feel my body fill upon inhaling and empty with exhaling. I will marvel at the changes in my friend’s one year old son. I will take pleasure in the weather and notice the change of seasons. I will move, stretch, and feel the power of my own body, and enjoy that. I will cherish these small moments of awareness and, each time, recommit to life.

I may not be able to live mindfully every moment. That’s not my goal; in fact, it’s akin to an obese smoker with high blood pressure suddenly attempting the decathlon. Assessing mindfulness from a perfectionist stance misses the point. It’s not about accruing X minutes of awareness. It’s about simply being present as much as possible — it’s the journey, not the destination.

For a good portion of Wednesday and Thursday, and now apparently into Friday, I have been reading and extrapolating information from Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, compiling quizzes from the book to use with the various couples I counsel.

The author, John Gottman, is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He conducted studies of over 2,000 married couples for 20 years to identify what makes marriages last. He’s become well-known for his abiity to predict with 94 percent accuracy which couples will stay married and which will not. I’d heard of him several years ago (from my own therapist, actually) and became intrigued.

In a nutshell, Gottman identified two major factors influencing martial stability and success: marital style and the ratio of positive to negative interaction.
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Love doesn’t come with a contract
You give me this I gave you that
It’s scary business
Your heart and soul is on the line

–Radney Foster, I’m In

Yesterday I heard this song for the first time in awhile, and it made me happy. It’s the kind of song that champions life. Sure, engaging love is scary. You might give it and be spurned by the intended recipient. There’s risk of injury. Yet the potential for reward is equally breathtaking.

There was a time in my life when friendships were quite transient. I’d moved to Austin — away from family and life-long familiarity — and got involved in different activities, meeting new people but finding they would drift out of my life. I was attentive and nurturing, but the effort wasn’t reciprocated. I recall wondering if something was wrong with me that might explain why these people were so uncommitted.

For awhile I was also tempted to lament the situation as being more evidence of our too-fast, overly mobile lifestyles in the U.S. While it may be true, focusing on this put me at risk of becoming bitter and cynical.

So I decided to reframe the way I perceived love. I imagined love in the form of an ocean — boundless, with high and low tides. People — like the tide — may come and go, but love’s ocean remains. When I felt alone, I focused on remembering that my life would be full of love and connection again, that this too was temporary.

Thinking about love in this way reduced my fear and neediness. This, in turn, allowed my true self to shine through, which then attracted more people to me. My life now is quite full of love — a life partner, family, and friends. I realize the secret to keeping love is in holding lightly, experiencing the relationship fully in the present, and being willing to let go when the time comes.

Last week over lunch with David Nunez (a local technology advocate and robotic multimedia artist), the topic of personality tests came up. Personality theory is an interest of mine, and I idly commented to him that I might write a post about it. As I continue reading The Stone Diaries (a novelistic study in personality if there ever was one), this passage struck me with quiet affection for the worlds of people that fiction carries us into:

This last was his favorite; there were turnings in the story that filled the back of his throat with smarting, sweet pains, and in those moments he felt his wife only a dozen heartbeats away… It astonished him, how these books were stuffed full of people. Each one was like a little world, populated and furnished. And the way those book people talked! Talk, talk, they lived in their tongues.

–Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (1993)

The question of who we are and how we come to be ourselves lies at the core of our existence. Some folks are curious and want to consider the mystery, while others not prone to self-reflection (affectionately known as navel-gazing) prefer to be and do and journey through life, taking it at face value. Neither is better than the other. But often, I think, we become frustrated and judgmental of those who are not like us. “If only he would be prompt!” “She has her head in the clouds too much.” “He’s got a soft touch, people take advantage of him.” “She’s so flighty.” We think that life might be much easier if only our beloveds were more like us.

Personality theory and tests have gained popularity in the past decade: the Myers-Briggs, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, the Ennegram all have helped people understand their differences. However, that’s only part of the equation. Knowing how we are different doesn’t resolve our frustration with the disparities. Indeed, sometimes people misunderstand and use personality typing as a competition, trying to find what type is “better” than the others. But the point of personality theory is to help us empathize with that other who is unlike us. If sincere effort is made to value the contribution that person makes because of her personality traits, and if one tries to see the world as that person does, one more step is taken toward improving relationships.

I’ll use a personal example. My Myers-Briggs personality type if INFJ. My boyfriend’s type is INTP. (If you don’t understand what the letters mean, not to worry. I’ll provide links momentarily.) The last letter of each type pertains to the decision-making aspect of personality. J standing for Judging (not judgmental) and P is Perceiving. People who score a high J tend to be schedule-oriented, organized, on time, future-focused, planners, fast decision-makers, and feel more comfortable after making a decision. Those who score a high P are typically spontaneous, autonomous, live in the moment, have trouble making decisions and put them off, seek more information, and are more laid-back about time, often late. Put a strong J and strong P together, and that’s a recipe for friction.

When we began dating, there was a good deal of tension between me and the Beau in this area. He thought I was uptight. I thought he was inconsiderate of my time. He said I couldn’t relax. I told him he was irresponsible. Oy vey. But then something happened. (Well, not as suddenly as that sentence suggests.) We got tired of griping at each other; we decided to stop judging and wishing to change each other and made a conscious effort to appreciate those qualities that drove us around the bend.

Gradually, I came to realize that being on time wasn’t imperative. The world wouldn’t end if I was a few minutes late. The weekend became less about nagging and crossing off tasks on my to-do list and more about playing. Similarly, the Beau made an effort to be more aware of time, to call if he was running late. I learned from him the value of shopping around rather than going to one store and impulsively saying, “Okay, I found something I like, let’s be done with it.” With patience, sometimes you can find an excellent deal. In turn, he has come to understand that gathering more data can be a way of stalling because one is fearful of making a mistake. Or that opportunities can be lost when one has a casual attitude about scheduling. We recently mused how nice it would be to see The Flaming Idiots’ last show (they say they’re retiring). I coordinated communication among our friends and booked the tickets — just in time, since the show was nearly sold out when I called, and was totally booked shortly after. We still have rough edges around that part of our relationship, but we understand and accommodate each other more, now that we’ve come to value — and love — the differences.

There is much more to say on the topic of personality, but I’ll save that for another day. If you want to learn more, you might check out the:

Keirsey Site
Enneagram Institute
Personality Pathways
9Types.com
C.G. Jung Page
Ennegram Notepage
Personality Page
Gurdjieff Links
Skeptic’s Dictionary for MBTI and Ennegram

Have fun and remember these are theories — not carved in stone. They are ideas intended to guide us toward understanding human nature.