Loyal to a Fault
Posted by Troy | Filed under Self Project
I’ve always had a bad attitude about personality tests (or their Christian counterpart – the spiritual gift finders).
I felt that people used such things to excuse bad behavior, fears and weaknesses. So each time I was required to take one of these tests I did so with the mindset of discovering my weaknesses so that I could fix them.
What added to my cynicism of such inventories was that I always seemed to come out right in the center of the grid, never swaying too far into right-brained or analytic or sanguine or whatever.
But after a decade or so of “fixing” my weaknesses I realized that it wasn’t working very well.
Because in an attempt to become something that no one can be, I lost sight of who I really am.
and never had a chance to work from my strengths.
And here I am in my thirties with lots of perspective but absolutely no direction at all.
So when my men’s group was going through spiritual gift inventories and personality investigations, I decided to give it my all.
And when five or six different personality tests (Meyers-Briggs, etc.) were laid out alongside one another I saw the commonalities among them, and for some reason I connected with the Golden Retriever on one of the lists when it mentioned “Loyal.”
Then all the other characteristics started to line up.
Apparently I’m a golden retriever.
(A type which I’m assuming always scores in the center of personality quizzes and has a bad attitude about them and always tries to work on weaknesses)
It’s got me wondering, is it really possible to be loyal to a fault?
I’ve been slandered and mistreated and taken-advantage-of and walked-on and manipulated and betrayed.
And I always come back for more…
Should I always stay loyal with an attitude of forgiveness, or should there be times when I say “enough.”
Or is it possible to do both?
Tags: original illustration, self
One Response to “Loyal to a Fault”
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Paul Says:
June 2nd, 2010 at 5:32 pmHaha – that photo is so trippy. Glad you found your spirit animal.
This reminds me of something I brought up with you in BK. It seems that our social education system (from public schools to broader aspects of society) utilize a deficiency model. Meaning, if you’re not good at Biology, you’ll spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to meet some arbitrary standard. I believe strongly in focusing people on their strengths instead. I think society would be much more diverse and strong if we utilized that approach. The Hawkins’ are particularly good at this.
You pose good questions though. Loyalty is observable but ‘to a fault’ seems to be a judgement call.
Thanks for sharing.
