Some people are
perfectionists, who preach at others for
falling short of perfection. The driving force of this personality style is anger, which
usually erupts when someone has failed to live up to their expectations.
We all have an internal judging voice. For some of us this is coupled with a compulsion to
make things perfect. On good days, wanting to fix things can be an inspiration to higher
attainment. Too often, though, the critical voice becomes preachy when things fall short
of what should be. This excerpt from Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's
poem Confession in April conveys exquisitely the inner
conflict of the Enneagram One, whose underlying anger is fed by an impossible perfectionism.
Impossible, as the will cannot be done perfectly:
Dear Lord, I have sinned against thee.
For I do not love all flowers equally.
For daffodils have come up in my yard instead
of tulips.
For I hate their stupid yellow faces...
For my anger is implacable against them.
Yet they grow in clusters like families...
For in the morning I wish it were evening
So they would be gone from my sight.
For I cannot forgive...
For I suspect their connivance against my
favorite tulips.
For their golds are gall to me.
For in truth, my will is not done.
Former poet laureate Stanly Kunitz shows us in
The Portrait how his mother's unforgiving anger over his father's
suicide "when I was waiting to be born" was passed on to him:
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand…
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
A quirky metaphor for those of us who have
felt cut off at the knees by a One's anger is shared by David Allan Evans in his poem
about hunting for frog's legs. Here's the last verse of
Bullfrogs:
ready to go home
we looked down and saw
what we had thrown back in:
quiet-bulging eyes nudging along
the moss's edge, looking up at us,
asking for their legs.
Constance Menefee's poignant
If Only portrays the One's finger pointed inward. It also
illustrates the self-bemused humor that is their true salvation. Those
angry tirades we sometimes endure are nothing compared to their inner strafing attacks:
Perfection
is a stubble-tongued whore
who clacks her bedroom
slipper false-teeth
and twitches well-oiled hips
knowingly
you coulda done more
shoulda done better
if only and if only...
Ones can also have a "running
amok" side that allows temporary escape from their own high standards.
We
have seen this in charismatic preachers who are caught in houses of ill repute, but it can
also show up in innovative and charming slants on reality. May Swenson's poems are
uninhibited, playful, and experimental. Though born in 1912 and writing at a time when
young southern girls were being taught how to be prim and proper, she cared little for
"what the neighbors might say." In
Beast,
for example, she admits:
my Brown self
goes on four paws
supple-twining in the
lewd Gloom
arching against the
shaggy hedges
with a relishing Purr
tasting among his
spurted fur...
my Brown self
a thing gleam-jawed
goes downright
Four-pawed
It would be good for Ones to be less
upright, more downright and four-pawed. If only they let go of self-judgment, of
holding themselves accountable to an unrealistic ideal, they will nurture their gift of
idealism. The Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön teaches the breathing practice of
Tonglen to remind us that we can only feel
compassion for others if we do so for ourselves: "Rather than beating yourself up,
use your own stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all
over the world."
Mary Oliver calls us to such humanity in
Wild Geese
– a moving invocation for Ones:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting...
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Other Poems by Published Poets that Illustrate this Personality
Style
Refusal (Carol Frost)
The Lightning (May Swenson)
