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Out of the Box Coaching and
BREAKTHROUGHS WITH THE ENNEAGRAM, Mary
R. Bast, Ph.D.
Poetry & Personality
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NOTE: This is a non-commercial, personal section of my website and is to be used for educational or research purposes only. "Fair use" is claimed under U.S. copyright law, sections 107 and 108. No commercial use is permitted without the consent of the copyright holder. For questions contact: Mary Bast
"As the Child Drinks" -- The Two
In Louise Erdrich's The Glass and the Bowl, the simple act of pouring a drink of milk epitomizes the self-satisfaction that giving can entail. Notice who is "filled" by the milk:The father pours the milk from his glass
into the cup of the child,
and as the child drinks
the whiteness, opening
her throat to the good taste
eagerly, the father is filled...Relationships are of the utmost importance to people of this Enneagram style. They can bring nurturing to a high art. Sheila Bender captures the best of Twos when she simultaneously celebrates and mourns her grown daughter's departure to a new life (For My Daughter Who Has Gone to Study in Japan). As she walks back to her front door, the poet likens herself to a planet having given birth to her daughter, the moon:
...lying on its back with its tiny toes in the air,
alone in the big blue sky and the funny moon didn't care.I sang these words to you and never wondered
if the planet that gave birth to the moon
was as brave as her offspring, if vines and trees
mourned the dropping of their ready fruit.Healthy Twos will share their gift of unconditional love and then rejoice when those they've helped are strong enough to act on their own, even in the face of loss. So Bender rejoices in the bravery of her offspring heading out into the world, yet mourning -- as vines and trees might mourn -- "the dropping of their ready fruit."
When not so healthy, Twos sublimate their own needs through caring for others. Instead of being loving, they act out their image of a loving person, an image that can only be sustained if there's someone needy to care for. Their drive to show love becomes, as Cathleen Calbert depicts in The Woman Who Loved Things, a cult, a way of being:
...Sensitive men and women became followers, wrapping themselves
in violet, pasting her image over their fast hearts,
pressing against walls until walls came to appreciate
differences in molecules. This became a worship.
They became a love. A church. A cult. A way of being.But, of course, it had to be: the woman's love kept growing
until she was loved by trees and appliances, from toasters
to natural obstacles, until her ceiling shook loose to send kisses,
sheets wound tight betwixt her legs, and floorboards broke free
of their nails, straining their lengths over her sleeping...Calbert exaggerates how people might cling to someone who loves them so much, but in that exaggeration we see the potential for hysteria when the desire to be loved for what we give becomes a compulsion. In my poem, Betrayed, I've tried to convey how the failure of another to reciprocate can leave someone blind with pain ("whatever braille-less truth / you tell me can't be read") and literally blind to their own emotions, turning that pain outward vindictively, because "I'm owed":
my blind pain claims
its space for handicaps
it wears dark glasses...Twos take pride in being helpful, often suppressing awareness of their own needs. Pablo Neruda tells us in Summario, "I am pleased to have taken on / so many obligations--in my life.." but then refers to his "impulse to be myself, only myself" as a weakness ("the weakness of self-pleasuring")...
...That is why--water on stone--my life was always
singing its way between joy and obligation.To the degree that nurture comes into play in determining our personality style, Twos often report having been the center of attention in childhood, then having had that withdrawn. Anne Sexton, who later committed suicide, asked in The Bells if her father remembered, as she did, their visit to the circus:
Father, do you remember?
Only the sound remains,
the distant thump of the good elephants,
the voice of the ancient lions
and how the bells
trembled for the flying man...
while love love
love grew rings around me...
I remember the color of music
and how forever
all the trembling bells of you
were mine.The transformational path for Twos entails finding and acting upon their own needs, walking through the fear that if they do not take care of others, they will not survive. Though they feel the tug of others crying, "Mend my Life," Twos come to realize that their caring must be turned within. From Mary Oliver's The Journey:
...and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.Other Poems by Published Poets that Illustrate this Type's Personality
My Mother Was Here Today (Sheila Bender)
After Love (Maxine Kumin)
The Delivery (Mona Van Duyn)
S M (Alice Walker)
A noiseless patient spider (Walt Whitman)My Poems
Poems by Readers
Transformation (Jean Gilreath) A Pinch of Salt (Bob Iliff)
Out of the Box Coaching and Breakthroughs with the Enneagram. Mary R. Bast, Ph.D.
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved. Revised:
January 28, 2008.