Hello I’m Sarah. Taurus, ENFP, Ravenclaw – obviously. That’s everything you need to know about me – and the key to understanding how my mind and emotions work, how I interact with other people, and most of my behaviour.
At least that’s what I like to think. There is nothing I love more than doing a little personality quiz in a magazine and slotting myself into one of the boxes marked “Mostly Bs” and finding out who I really am. I recently did “Which British Royal are you?” Anne. News to me. Couldn’t believe it. But I’m not about to question the wisdom of the quiz.
I’ve been doing flow charts like this since I was eight years old reading Girl Talk and since I was 15 years old filling out chain email questionnaires and pasting them into my MySpace bio box. I’m desperate for someone else to tell me who I am and to proudly declare it to the world, as if it unlocks some central truth, as if it aligns me with my tribe.
I haven’t really grown out of this now I’m 31, I’ve just translated it to the workplace. Since finding out that friends in corporate industries are regularly – in the name of management – asked to self-assess to find out their “colour” (apparently this decodes something or other), I’ve decided, too, that it’s of vital importance that I know the (widely discredited and regularly criticised) Myers-Briggs type of everyone I work closely with so that I can assess how theirs matches up with mine and, I suppose eventually, reach some kind of office utopia in which decisions are made calmly and quickly and we are all thriving in harmony on our unique but aligned personality paths and achieving optimum performance (note to my superiors: thank me later).
According to 16personalities.com, I’m an ENFP (“The Campaigner”) – so is Jennifer Aniston, by the way – while the colleague I work closest with is an INFP (“The Mediator”). I should apparently avoid overcrowding her and allow her time and space to reflect. Work in progress.
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This kind of thing has come up at the last three parties I’ve been to. Introvert or extrovert, red versus yellow, It’s the new “cats or dogs?”, which is a debate that I’m afraid in my social circles continues to flare up regularly despite most other people leaving it in Year Two. I am of reasonable intelligence and know with my sound mind that being a Capricorn rising with Spring colouring means precisely nothing. So why am I so willing to cling to this nonsense?
Firstly, I suppose, self-obsession. The millennial generation is (often quite unfairly) accused of this all the time, but I’m the first to admit that even for us, I do take it to extremes. Then there’s the fact that anybody who grew up in the 90s and 2000s came of age in a culture in which – despite everything our parents and teachers tried to tell us – “fitting in” was the ultimate goal and difference was bold and ballsy. We are probably spending our adulthoods trying to find a way to unlearn that and embrace our individuality (or try to get a quiz to provide it).
And then there’s the very simple but horrifying prospect that maybe as we inch older we are getting more and more like everybody else. It is very hard to admit that I am indistinguishable from every other middle class balayage bottle blonde who shops in Zara and feels guilty about it, eats meat and doesn’t feel all that guilty about it, likes Sally Rooney novels and listening to Taylor Swift, speaks without thinking and started cold water swimming and – get this – thinks it might be benefiting her wellbeing and mental health?
I won’t surrender. All those things are true. But I’ll also have you know that I’m an alto! I was born in the year of the goat! I’m an Amy – even though I wish I was a Jo! And I think Burger King is better than McDonald’s! There’s nobody else like me in the world!
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