Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been drawn to modalities that put me neatly into a category of people. I started with astrology and quizzes in teen magazines. As I got older, I delved into Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, Human Design, and more. It’s compelling to know where I fit in among my fellow humans — not only for my curiosity but for my overall sense of belonging.

Paradoxically, I have a strong aversion to labels. I know that when we group people into distinct categories, we risk treading into divisiveness or othering. Yet I can’t deny that these boxes give me a degree of comfort. When I leave the aisles of neatly categorized people, I return to a world that’s beautiful in shades of grey, but also tricky to navigate.

Let me tell you a secret. I was originally going to build my book around a quiz related to authenblissity. But when I started creating the questions and trying to slot everything I knew about humans into four or five distinct categories, I started to feel a pebble of discomfort. It wasn’t just tricky; it was impossible. There was a hardness about it, something rigid and final and fundamentally untrue.

Because as much as these modalities have helped me find peace in being myself, I’m not a caricature of a Gemini or an INFJ or a 2/5 Manifesting Generator. There are many aspects of myself that fall neatly into these categories, but there are also many aspects that don’t. And these are the nuances that make me uniquely me.

It didn’t take me long to scrap my original idea. Over time, I instead found myself drawn to the concept of the pendulum. I leaned in by imagining dualities on a continuum that helped me gauge where I was in relation to a topic. How am I feeling at this moment? What are my current thoughts around this topic? Where do I belong between these dualities right now?

Instead of finding comfort in being slotted in with a group of similar people, I started finding comfort in simply being myself. There was freedom in not being tied to either side of the pendulum. There was freedom in being able to oscillate and change over time.

As fun as it is for me do quizzes about which starseed I am or dive deep into the rabbit hole of what it means to be an Enneagram 9, I haven’t been able to find any description that 100% captures the entirety of me.

This made me think about how the same thing must also be true for you. Quizzes, astrology, and personality indicators are helpful when we apply them inward, but these same tools can be limiting when we apply them outward. I know the nuance of me, but I don’t know the nuance of you.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating book called Talking to Strangers. It’s about how we’re really bad at reading the people around us, especially if we don’t know them well. We think we’ve got someone all figured out — by the way they use their words, how show their emotions or lack thereof, or any other cues we think we can use to interpret their motives. But often, for all sorts of reasons, people don’t behave in ways that are aligned with their inner worlds.

I don’t want to put you in a box, or have any preconceived ideas about how we might interact with each other. Of course, I’m curious about you, so please tell me if you’re an Aquarius or an ENTP or a 1/4 Projector, and I’ll believe you. These modalities are fascinating — they can point us to where we’re similar and where we’re different — but they can never capture all the nuances. And I want to know the nuance of you.

THIS MONTH’S REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS

Where does the pendulum come to rest for you in relation to quizzes, astrology, personality indicators, or other modalities that categorize people into groups? Do you seek out these modalities or do you avoid them? How do these modalities show up in your life? How do they help or hurt your connection with yourself or the people around you?

With you in beautiful shades of grey,

P.S. I’m experimenting with turning these blog posts into cozy solocasts. If you’d like some more context around this month’s blog post and hear my thoughts on the reflective questions, click here for the companion podcast episode.