Poetry & Personality: Enneagram Three

Out of the Box Coaching and
BREAKTHROUGHS WITH THE ENNEAGRAM, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D.

Poetry & Personality

Some people are self-promoting and can showcase themselves at the expense of others. Their driving force is vanity.

A Road Less Traveled
Lawrie Dignan

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"Deep, the way it is..." -- The Three
Ah, the attention, the roar of the crowds, the thrill of being in the spotlight. Surely each of us has experienced (even if just in fantasy) a moment's ecstasy: "Me? Me? Why they're applauding for me!" Imagine now that you are addicted to this Ecstasy, only sure of yourself in that moment of glory.

Until they pay attention to the call of their souls, Threes look outward for their reflection in the eyes of others, and their inner life is lacking. They are too focused on looking good. Thus, they tend to be self-deceiving, reframing even failure as success. A. E. Housman explores the brevity of triumph in To an Athlete Dying Young:

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose...

The laurels do fade, but those who are crowned in victory may be slow to search for deeper meaning. Jonathan Holden takes our breath away as his poem At a Low Mass For Two Hot-Rodders describes a funeral mass for two teenage competitors who would not "chicken out and swerve." He sees with the poet's eye the cost of winning ("they idle in a feelingless embrace") and implies the life-giving momentum of losing. The winners are wheeled to their common grave by the losers...

Black-jacketed and glum, who also steered
Toward absolute success with total pride,
But, inches from it, felt, and turned aside.

These boys who didn't crash are still "glum" about having "felt," but this is a perfect metaphor for the transitional state of a Three -- to be, to feel is such a significant shift from "doing," from keeping your eyes only on the prize. It takes some getting used to. To lose that drive for others' applause we need to "walk where my own nature would be leading," as Emily Brontë reminds us in Stanzas. Here, "the lonely mountains reveal"...

More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

Ah, but our own nature, "the legend under" as William Stafford writes of it in Bi-Focal, is "deep as the darkest mine," and the signals along the way are spare -- "the thick rocks won't tell." Why would Threes draw away from the accolades of the world? It is only when they come to see that "the world happens twice"--

once what we see it as;
second as it legends itself
deep, the way it is.

If you read John Berryman's The Animal Trainer (1) carefully you will see that the animals represent the work that awaits Threes. The trainer thought he must leave the circus, the "excitements of disappointment and praise." His animals had been his "distraction," and he thinks that if he escapes "the smells and cages here" he will "stand naked in the sun." But his heart said: "Can you do without your animals?"

--You are an animal trainer, Heart replied.
Without your animals leaping at your side
No sun will save you, nor this bloodless pride.

--What must I do then? Must I stay and work
With animals, and confront the night, in the circus?

--You learn from animals. You learn in the dark.

Threes do not become transformed by walking away from the cages that their egos have constructed. Like all of us, they learn from their animals. They must confront the dark. However difficult the passage, though, it becomes sweet as they surprise themselves with their own presence.

Other Poems by Published Poets that Illustrate this Type's Personality

Powers of Thirteen-6-Fancy-Pants (John Hollander)
Fame (Irene McKinney)

My Poems

Contest
From a Slightly Masochistic Petunia

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