Not Waving, But Drowning

I'm doing an analytical study of the poem "Not Waving But Drowning" by Stevie Smith. I was wondering if you could explain the idea of the Enneagram, and how these feelings/emotions can relate to Smith's poem, which you've included on your site. 

The Enneagram is a very old system that helps us understand the illusory roles we play in day-to-day interactions. Each of us has a particular focus of attention (we develop and carry throughout our lives. It's our task, if we seek the truth about ourselves, to uncover how habitual these responses are and to look for the inner essence that lies within each of us. Many would describe this as a spiritual journey.

The Enneagram Seven is often referred to as the Optimist, or the Enthusiast, or even the Cheerleader. Because much of my work has been in business organizations I've referred to the Seven as the Futurist. These are charming, optimistic, forward-thinking, energetic, interested, inventive people who focus on having a good time. When driven by their inner compulsion ("gluttony") they're enthusiastic to a fault and seek pleasure to avoid pain. Thus their activity can have an uneasy quality.

But these are just words. I like to use poetry to evoke the issues of Enneagram styles because poetic images arouse peoples' emotions and thus become metaphors for life issues. Stevie Smith's poem seems almost a perfect one for the Enneagram Seven. It captures the often unconscious quality of this style's compulsion to enjoy at all costs, yet if we look beyond the surface, all the happy chatter and good times are symptomatic of their underlying pain ("drowning"), which they may not even know they're afraid to look at. Thus on the surface the person in Smith's poem is "waving" (having a good time, "swimming"), but always "much further out than you thought," in pain, in fact dying (drowning), beyond what appears on the surface. The line "I was much too far out all my life" grabbed me in particular, because I have a Seven friend whose favorite phrase (held over from the Sixties) is "Far out!"

Paul Zimmer ("Zimmer Resisting Temperance") also captures the Seven's image, the title quite an irony because temperance (or renunciation) is the spiritual path for the Seven. Zimmer "always expects to be happy" and "loves this world relentlessly." Both phrases capture the compulsive quality of the Seven's search for joy. The unexamined Seven looks for meaning in the wrong places. Real joy comes from a balanced life, not one that ignores the reality of pain. Sevens are often spiritual seekers (Charles Tart, transpersonal psychologist and scientist, is a Seven). As Zimmer says, "Each day he plans to end up squatting like / Mahatma Gandhi with a glass of unsweetened tea." And finally, "Someday he may fall face down / In the puke of his own buoyancy…"

These poets probably know nothing of the Enneagram. They write out of their own raw experience and what they observe, but as poets they see through the veils in a way that helps us see past the illusions, too. Finally, while each of us remains a given style for our whole life, with its characteristic struggles and gifts, we can also learn from the lessons of the remaining eight styles.

All of us run away from pain and depth to some degree -- when we see the Seven seemingly waving we're drawn to join in the fun, but if we're astute observers we see the pain behind the perennial smile. Sevens often had a childhood trauma from which they escaped into a fantasy world; and none of us escapes childhood without some emotional bruises. That's why we're drawn to such poetry as Smith's.

I have no idea if Stevie Smith is a Seven or simply was able to capture their essential quality, but the poem reaches me right in the gut. I hope Sevens reading the poem will have the same reaction, and it will be a chain reaction that helps them how they compulsively "wave" when they're actually "drowning."

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