compulsiverambler
New member
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2009
- Messages
- 446
- Enneagram
- 5w6
- Instinctual Variant
- sp/so
It's supposedly just as possible for 4s as for any other type. In a vacuum, all types have an equal chance of being healthy. However, because each culture is pre-disposed to value certain traits and characteristics, I would argue that in reality this cannot possibly be the case.
I'm not aware of wanting to be different, necessarily. Just authentic. It's easy to come to conflate the two, especially as you say, in certain cultural environments. Authentic expression is just important to me in principle and in general. I loathe formulaic arts and entertainment, not because it's popular, but because for example it takes what are sometimes good lyrics and melodies, and wastes them by setting them to a structure, instrumentation and even kind of voice and style of singing that aren't chosen because they're appropriate and add anything artistically valuable but just because they're what seem to be working during that period to shift units. I loathe them because they cheat people, especially those who are rarely exposed to anything else, out of what could be a far more evocative piece if all the elements worked together to express a coherent mood or theme. It's insulting.
This song for example: Red. Could have been fantastic. But what the hell is that drum doing. That doesn't need to be there at all and ruins it. And why are there strings repeating the melody, and why are they so gentle? It works against the weary, desperate tones produced by other elements. These are the songs that should be getting covered, the ones that aren't done right the first time.
This is the attitude I have to most aspects of life. I don't want the artistic integrity of anything to be compromised, including myself. "If you can't be a work of art, wear a work of art." Some people like everything that can express something, to express it honestly and completely, including the self. It can be hard to accept that you can be multi-faceted and still authentic. The fact that you feel different at different times is therefore distressing and confusing. That's happened to me. I didn't understand that rather than forcing myself to be one thing all the time, I should let myself explore everything and every way to be and feel, because it IS all still me, and couldn't be anything else. Your overall identity is harder to observe that way, because at any one time you're like one piece of a mosaic trying to see how you fit into the big picture and what the big picture is. You have to have faith that there is one, and that all the pieces will fall together if you let them. Like this.