Personality Types

So what's a Jovian? Well, first of all, I'm not talking about the somewhat inept Roman emperor, nor a class of planets. I would use “jovial”, which actually means the same thing, but people have a much too narrow view of the word. Yes, it does mean “full of high-spirited merriment” and all that comes with it. But as a personality type, it's just the beginning. The archetype is much more than the mood.

A jovian person is, at the core, joyful and expansive. The Spirit of Christmas Present in Dickens' A Christmas Carol is perhaps the best example. That good soul was a giant, the better to embody such love and joy, generosity and kindness. Note that while often portrayed as flighty, the Spirit was actually deeply aware that his joy was not universally known, and kept hidden in his robes the shameful children of mankind, Ignorance and Want.

The jovian personality is curious and optimistic, with a bright outlook toward life that at times defies a given situation. The difference between happiness and joy can be found by watching such people. They are interested in a great many things and find wonder and adventure everywhere. This curiosity reaches from the tiniest marvels of the world to the great questions of existence.

The other great example of the jovian archetype is of course Jove - better known as Jupiter. That Roman deity claimed the oak, full moon and lightning as sacred, all of which are signs of solidity and power. He presided over justice (which is why we have the phrase, “By Jove!”) and was chief among the gods. And such a personality! From this example can be found most of a jovian person's best traits: at their best, they are generous, tolerant, truthful, and enthusiastic.

Combine these traits, mores and essential values, and you arrive at a person who inspires, infects others with joy, take bold steps confidently but with risks calculated, radiates love, and gladly teaches the ways of joyfulness - if not always in usual ways.

Jovians are perceived as intrinsically powerful even if they have no imposing physique to suggest it. Their comfort in their own skin and their calm handling of life bespeaks the interested unconcern of power. Don't miss this: That very way of being causes them to become more powerful. This happens in obvious ways, as people react positively to perceptions of capability. It also happens less obviously, as their affirmative outlook actually seems to rechart the path of their surroundings to their desires. No, I cannot actually prove that yet, but it is no small part of this experiment's object. Jupiter is also strongly associated with excellent fortune, and I have come to suspect that it has much to do with the broad and cheerful optimism of the archetype.

This is the sort of person that I should be. Surely only a few attain all of what I've described here, but I know that it's the path that works best for me. The other ways of living have not gone very well, and even if I never reach the perfect Jovian goal, it's the direction I need to aim. There is a place in me that knows it, wants to flow into it like water down a streambed. It's a little scary, really. I don't have much of an idea of how well this will go. I can only see a couple of steps ahead.

Still, I hear my ideal self calling to me from wherever he is hid: “Come, and know me better, man!”

An Introduction and Brief History

Hello. I'm Nicholas. Welcome to my little experiment.

Once upon a time I was more myself. By this I mean that while I had not really come into my own as a whole person, I was developing along the lines shown by my natural strengths and personality. As time went by, though, the world began to wear me down and cause me to mistrust myself and others. Mistakes led not to correcting the way I approach goals but rather to changing my goals to other things entirely - and those new goals were all too often not really what I should be about. I found myself increasingly frustrated with almost every aspect of my life, feeling betrayed by my own choices and too afraid of risk to correct them. Eventually I realized that while I could spiral into long-term misery, I could declare any given moment in time to be the nadir, and work toward reversing the trend.

That's very brief and very vague, but it does describe the downward arc my life has traced for a decade or more. You'll get more detail than you probably want as this journal progresses, but the main thing right now is that I recognize that things have to change, and not to do so is to risk far worse than the dangers of changing. I've become a student open to instruction, and several teachers, just as the old saying promises, have appeared.

The thing that woke me up was the realization that I was barely still myself. I had become this strange, cramped being, trying to shove my personality into a different form, favor strengths I don't have, and ignore my real strengths and passions. Is it any wonder that a continuous, grinding misery followed? I had been on this path for years by the time I realized it. Those teachers validated my hunch that what I was doing was not merely difficult but actually wrong.

I must apologize for the incoherent nature of this opening article. It's strange to talk about these things, and difficult to summarize a very complicated situation with enough detail to actually inform and enough brevity to avoid making it novel-length.

The next step here is to detail the sort of ideal or archetype that is natural to me (as though the blog's title didn't make that clear), and set out the specific goals… and why I refer to this as an experiment. Then I'll piece my way through the various teachings and observations, finding out what works, and which teacher's views are more correct when they disagree.

Here we go…