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 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.
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 fit 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. I
hope Sevens reading the poem will have a
chain reaction that helps them see how they compulsively "wave"
when they're actually "drowning."
