Right, Left, or Middle?

A 20-question magazine quiz recently brought about some all-too-familiar over-thinking. You'll be happy to know it wasn't about choosing a loyal BFF or whether one is attracted to bad boys versus the straight-laced sort. My magazine quizzes these days are decidedly more grown-up. Thank goodness.

The June issue of Real Simple featured "Organizing for your Personality." A brief quiz reveals whether one is left-brained, "those who think in words (attention, list makers!), do a lot of advance planning, or approach challenges in a rational, linear way" OR right-brained, those who "are visually oriented," who "tend to think in images rather than words, focus on the big picture rather than the details, and go through life in a somewhat seat-of-the-pants (a.k.a. scattered) way."

Before I do the big reveal, a bit of background...

I have long tried to reconcile my affinity for lists and label makers with my penchant for spontaneity and creativity. How is it that I can plan weddings or as one of my professors stated on a reference, "run a small country" yet not get a kid to soccer practice on time or banish the never-ending clutter?

Why can I not read a map? If someone gives me directions, it needs to be in list-form {turn left here, go 1/4 of a mile and turn right on this street.}

My light switches are labeled...

Yet I've chosen to write this blog post instead of tackling the dishes.

My baskets are organized {and yes, labeled.}

And alphabetical order makes my heart race {in a good way}...

Yet daily I do battle with the spontaneous, haphazard, absent-minded, and creative urges that thwart my Type-A ways and good intentions.

I feel as if my brain, not knowing whether to go right or left, could use some direction, a concrete label to give it an identity....which is why I took the quiz.

The truth of the matter is, I'm somewhere in the middle. Shocker. My score revealed 5 points for left-brained and 3 points for right. Funny how a simple quiz confirms what I already knew but am still reluctant to embrace. It seems easier to be one or the other.

Free-spirited artist types probably don't lament their inability to live life in a linear, labeled way. Likewise, the Type-A sorts likely don't go through their organized, matching, alphabetized existence and wish they could fly by the seats of their pants a little more.

This isn't the first of my personality inventories that defies solid categorization. My Myers-Briggs shows that I am smack in the middle of E and I...which is where I sit in the other sections as well. While some would say I'm balanced, I simply feel confused and fragmented, torn between two seemingly disparate selves.

E.E. Cummings wrote,

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Or in the words of my mom, a wise advice-giver in her own right,

You be you.

Easier said than done.

I'm sure the editors of Real Simple never intended their little quiz to result in such existential musings, but it helped me realize that living from a place of authenticity isn't easy for most of us, especially when we tend to inhabit a middle kingdom. For someone with an affinity for label makers, the inability to label or categorize oneself is, well, disconcerting.

Much like my kitchen, this isn't one of those posts that has a neat and tidy ending.

The journey towards the true self is just that, a journey.

And it's probably best to leave the label maker at home.

......................................

So I'm curious, which direction does your brain go?